In this episode of Elixir Wizards, host Sundi Myint chats with SmartLogic engineers and fellow Wizards Dan Ivovich and Charles Suggs about the practical tooling that surrounds Elixir in a consultancy setting. We dig into how standardized dev environments, sensible scaffolding, and clear observability help teams ship quickly across many client projects without turning every app into a snowflake. Join us for a grounded tour of what’s working for us today (and what we’ve retired), plus how we evaluate new tech (including AI) through a pragmatic, Elixir-first lens.
Key topics discussed in this episode:
Standardizing across projects: why consistent environments matter in consultancy work
Nix (and flakes) for reproducible dev setups and faster onboarding
Igniter to scaffold common patterns (auth, config, workflows) without boilerplate drift
Deployment approaches: OTP releases, runtime config, and Ansible playbooks
Frontend pipeline evolution: from Brunch/Webpack to esbuild + Tailwind
Observability in practice: Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboards
Handling time-series and sensor data
When Explorer can be the database
Picking the right tool: Elixir where it shines, integrations where it counts
Using AI with intention: code exploration, prototypes, and guardrails for IP/security
Keeping quality high across multiple codebases: tests, telemetry, and sensible conventions
Reducing context-switching costs with shared patterns and playbooks
Links mentioned:
http://smartlogic.io
https://nix.dev/
https://github.com/ash-project/igniter
Elixir Wizards S13E01 Igniter with Zach Daniel https://youtu.be/WM9iQlQSFg
https://github.com/elixir-explorer/explorer
Elixir Wizards S14E09 Explorer with Chris Grainger https://youtu.be/OqJDsCF0El0
Elixir Wizards S14E08 Nix with Norbert (Nobbz) Melzer https://youtu.be/yymUcgy4OAk
https://jqlang.org/
https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep
https://github.com/resources/articles/devops/ci-cd
https://prometheus.io/
https://capistranorb.com/
https://ansible.com/
https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/releases.html
https://brunch.io/
https://webpack.js.org/loaders/css-loader/
https://tailwindcss.com/
https://sass-lang.com/dart-sass/
https://grafana.com/
https://pragprog.com/titles/passweather/build-a-weather-station-with-elixir-and-nerves/
https://www.datadoghq.com/
https://sqlite.org/
Elixir Wizards S14E06 SDUI at Cars.com with Zack Kayser https://youtu.be/nloRcgngTk
https://github.com/features/copilot
https://openai.com/codex/
https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code
YouTube Video: Vibe Coding TEDCO's RFP https://youtu.be/i1ncgXZJHZs
Blog: https://smartlogic.io/blog/how-i-used-ai-to-vibe-code-a-website-called-for-in-tedco-rfp/
Blog: https://smartlogic.io/blog/from-vibe-to-viable-turning-ai-built-prototypes-into-market-ready-mvps/
https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/eragon-by-christopher-paolini/246801
https://tidewave.ai/
!! We Want to Hear Your Thoughts *!!*
Have questions, comments, or topics you'd like us to discuss in our season recap episode?
Share your thoughts with us here: https://forms.gle/Vm7mcYRFDgsqqpDC9