toolnexus (Elixir)
Your LLM, with MCP tools and agent skills built in — in 3 lines, on the BEAM.
toolnexus unifies every tool source an agent needs — MCP servers (stdio +
streamable-HTTP), agent skills (SKILL.md folders), your own functions, HTTP
endpoints, ten built-in shell/file tools, and remote A2A agents — behind one
uniform Tool, emits the schema in OpenAI / Anthropic / Gemini formats, and
ships a unified client with a built-in tool-calling loop (hooks, parallel tool
calls, retries, conversation memory, suspension/resume, metrics).
It is the Elixir port of toolnexus, byte-identical in behavior with the JS, Python, Go, Java, and C# ports — same config files, same outputs, same wire formats. The MCP client is implemented in-house on OTP (supervised connections, no third-party MCP SDK), which is also why this port ships the full elicitation bridge (form and URL mode).
Install
def deps do
[{:toolnexus, "~> 0.10"}]
end
Zero to agent
{:ok, toolkit} = Toolnexus.create_toolkit(mcp_config: "mcp.json", skills_dir: ["skills"])
client = Toolnexus.Client.create(base_url: System.get_env("OPENAI_BASE_URL"),
style: "openai", model: "gpt-4.1",
api_key: System.get_env("OPENAI_API_KEY"))
result = Toolnexus.Client.run(client, "What tools do you have? Use one.", toolkit)
IO.puts(result.text)
mcp.jsonis the standard Claude-desktop-style config (mcpServers/servers/mcptop-level keys all accepted).skills/is a folder of**/SKILL.mdfiles with YAML frontmatter — loaded on demand through the singleskilltool (progressive disclosure).- Remote MCP
headersvalues expand${ENV_VAR}at call time and are never logged.
Why the BEAM port
Long-running agents want supervision. Every MCP connection is a supervised
process; a crashed stdio server is isolated (status "failed") without taking
your toolkit down; parallel tool calls ride Task.async_stream. Same contract
as the other five ports, native OTP underneath.
Sub-agents & teams
An Agent is a Tool: a system prompt × a scoped toolkit view × the client loop. One agent
delegates to another in-process via one task tool — isolated context, one result back,
tokens rolled up, hierarchical budgets, durable suspension (SPEC.md §7D). Each handle is a
GenServer with an inbox-as-state; interrupt kills only the in-flight Run, never the agent.
alias Toolnexus.Agents
explore = Agents.agent("explore", does: "read-only research", uses: %{tools: [lookup]})
coder =
Agents.agent("coder",
does: "implements changes",
soul_file: "AGENTS.md",
team: [explore], # team = the task tool's only targets; no team ⇒ no task tool
budget: %{max_tokens: 10_000}
)
r = Agents.run(coder, [llm: %{base_url: "https://openrouter.ai/api/v1", style: "openai", model: "openai/gpt-4o-mini"}], "fix the failing test")
IO.puts("#{r.status} #{r.text} #{r.total_tokens}")
Full guide: Sub-agents & teams.
Docs
Full documentation (all six languages, one site): https://muthuishere.github.io/toolnexus/