Complex Workflows in Elixir with Reactor (+ AI Agents)

How to orchestrate complex workflows, implement the saga pattern with automatic rollbacks, and build AI agents using the Reactor library in Elixir.

Reactor is an Elixir library for orchestrating complex workflows with automatic rollbacks, sagas, and concurrent execution. In this video, we build a travel booking system that coordinates flights, hotels, and emails—then turn it into an AI agent using Ash AI. Reactor handles the complexity of distributed transactions across multiple services, automatically undoing operations when something fails downstream. Perfect for payment gateways, reservation systems, or any multi-step process that needs reliability. We'll cover: - Dependency graphs and concurrent step execution - Implementing sagas with compensating actions - Retries and error handling strategies - Integration with Ash Framework - Building an AI travel agent with function calling Links: Screen recording software I use (affiliate): screen.studio/@Yy75o Reactor Livebook: gist.github.com/ChristianAlexander/a83a7189c1509939ac3b7b881… Project Repo: github.com/ChristianAlexander/travel_agency Reactor docs: hexdocs.pm/reactor/readme.html Reactor cheat sheet: hexdocs.pm/reactor/reactor-cheatsheet.html Ash AI: github.com/ash-project/ash_ai Timestamps: What's Reactor? - 00:00 Livebook Reactor Demo - 01:31 The AI Part - 07:19