Owning Your AI Stack with Zach Daniel

In this episode of Elixir Wizards, Charles Suggs and Emma Whamond are joined by Zach Daniel, creator of the Ash Framework and Igniter, VP of Engineering at Remedy Meds, and upcoming ElixirConf keynote speaker, to talk about what sits between an LLM and useful engineering work. Zach reflects on how much has changed since his last appearance on the podcast in October 2024, moving from Igniter, code generation, and project patching into AI agents, context layers, and custom engineering workflows. The conversation explores how deterministic tools and probabilistic LLMs can work together, and why the most useful AI systems often depend on the structure built around the model. We also discuss why teams should be careful about outsourcing the systems that hold their organizational knowledge and decision-making. He shares his perspective on owning the AI stack, building internal knowledge systems, training junior developers in an AI-augmented world, avoiding vendor lock-in, and why Elixir may be especially well-suited for safer agentic workflows. Zach will be a keynote speaker at ElixirConf 2026, September 10–11 in Chicago, and the Elixir Wizards will be there too! Join us and the broader Elixir community, and use promo code Elixirwizards for 10% off in-person or virtual tickets at https://elixirconf.com/ Key topics discussed in this episode: Zach Daniel’s work with Ash, Igniter, and AI tooling How software development has changed since 2024 Deterministic code generation vs. LLM-generated code Combining structured tools with AI agents What it means to own your AI stack Organizational knowledge as an engineering “spinal column” Context layers, documentation, and internal workflows Building custom agentic systems Security, vendor lock-in, and open source LLMs Junior developers and apprenticeship in the AI era Why Elixir and the BEAM fit agentic workflows Links mentioned: Ash Framework https://ash-hq.org/ Igniter https://igniter.hexdocs.pm/ Phoenix Framework https://www.phoenixframework.org/ Remedy Meds https://remedymeds.com/ Keynote: Code Generators are Dead. Long Live Code Generators - Chris McCord | ElixirConf EU 2025 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojL_VHc4gLk https://phoenix.hexdocs.pm/Mix.Tasks.Phx.Gen.Live.html LSP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol Claude Code https://claude.com/product/claude-code GitHub Actions https://github.com/features/actions Harness Engineering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_harness
Claude SDK https://code.claude.com/docs/en/agent-sdk/overview Zach's Twitter https://x.com/ZachSDaniel1 ElixirConf https://elixirconf.com/ AshConf https://luma.com/wz4z0iz6 Goatmire https://goatmire.com/Special Guest: Zach Daniel.