Arcana

Arcana is an embeddable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) library built specifically for Elixir and Phoenix applications. It provides a complete, opinionated framework for integrating AI-powered search and question-answering into your existing Elixir projects without the typical boilerplate. Arcana is designed for Elixir developers who want to add semantic search, Q&A over their own data, or agentic workflows without leaving the BEAM ecosystem. It ships with a built-in dashboard for monitoring and debugging your RAG pipelines, and uses a declarative configuration approach. Under the hood, Arcana handles document ingestion, chunking, embedding generation, and retrieval. It supports multiple vector databases and embedding model providers. Its agentic pipeline feature allows you to chain retrieval, reasoning steps, and tool calls to build complex AI workflows. What makes Arcana different is its deep integration with Phoenix and Elixir's concurrency model. It's not a wrapper around a remote API — it's a native OTP library that runs in your process. This means low-latency, no external service dependencies for the core pipeline, and full control over your data.