March 5, 2026
BEAM me up, agent drama
Show HN: Jido 2.0, Elixir Agent Framework
Elixir agents go prime time; fans cheer while skeptics demand receipts
TLDR: Jido 2.0, a toolkit for building AI-style agents in Elixir, launched on Hex with a simpler, more reliable core. Comments split between BEAM hype, OTP jokes, demands for proof like observer screenshots, and questions about LangChain compatibility and a small ecosystem.
After 18 months of tinkering and a bold bet on the Erlang runtime, Jido 2.0 just landed on Hex—and the crowd came in hot. The dev threw shade at TypeScript and Python (“toys” and “can’t stay up”), and the HN chorus lit up with BEAM or bust energy. One fan joked they’re excited to finally avoid “vibecoding,” while another asked for a literal receipts moment: a screenshot from Observer, the Erlang dashboard that shows every tiny process marching in lockstep.
The vibe: big confidence, bigger questions. A long-time watcher loves the fit but worries the Elixir ecosystem is still too small; another quipped, “oh no did HN traffic defeat OTP,” poking at Erlang’s legendary resilience (OTP is its battle-tested toolkit). There’s also a “how does this sit next to LangChain?” thread, with folks guessing it’s complementary—but wanting proof of easy integration. Meanwhile, a tiny hiccup—escaped characters in code samples—became a mini drama, with commenters demanding polish to match the swagger. Jido’s split into bite-size packages for actions and signals got nods, but the real show is the community tug-of-war between hype and “show me.” The agents are ready; the crowd wants receipts—and memes.
Key Points
- •Jido 2.0, an Elixir-based agent framework, has been released and is available on Hex.
- •The framework adopts a pure functional agent architecture with a single cmd/2 interface that returns updated agent data and typed side-effect directives.
- •Jido.AgentServer provides a supervised runtime with signal routing, directive execution, and support for parent–child agent hierarchies.
- •Pluggable strategies include Direct and FSM; AI reasoning strategies (e.g., ReAct, Chain-of-Thought) and jido_behaviortree integrate via the same interface.
- •Actions and signals are modularized into jido_action and jido_signal, with CloudEvents v1.0.2-based messaging, 25+ tools, DAG workflow planning, and ReqLLM tool-format compatibility.