Justin Tormey, co-founder of Castmagic, joins the Elixir Wizards to discuss building an AI-powered content creation app. Castmagic repurposes audio and video into social media posts, blog articles, newsletters, and more. The tech stack leverages OpenAI and Anthropic LLMs with Elixir as the coordination layer and Phoenix LiveView powering the front end.

Justin dives into the technical details of Castmagic, including the integration of JavaScript libraries like ProseMirror and TipTap through LiveSvelte, as well as enabling real-time collaboration with CRDTs and YDoc. He shares the benefits and challenges of using Elixir for rapid development, as well as the trade-offs between custom code and off-the-shelf solutions.

The conversation also covers Justin’s entrepreneurial journey, highlighting the advantages of bootstrapping over venture capital, the importance of acquiring early customers, and creative marketing strategies like affiliate programs and software marketplaces.

Whether you're an Elixirist exploring machine learning or an aspiring tech founder, tune in to learn more about AI with Elixir, navigating startup challenges, and turning ideas into impactful software.

Topics discussed in this episode:

Building Castmagic to generate content from audio and video for creators
Using AI services like OpenAI and Anthropic for transcription and workflows
Elixir as the coordination layer for complex processes
Rapid UI development with Phoenix LiveView
Integrating rich text editing libraries through LiveSvelte
Enabling collaborative editing with CRDTs and YDoc
Balancing offline functionality with cloud-based AI tools
Challenges of working with external AI services
Exploring the future of multimodal AI in product development
Bootstrapping vs. venture capital: benefits and challenges
Strategies for finding distribution channels and early adopters
Creative approaches to marketing, including affiliates and marketplaces
Balancing engineering efforts with customer and business needs
Practical advice for navigating the early stages of a startup

Links mentioned:

https://www.castmagic.io/
https://pragprog.com/titles/jaerlang2/programming-erlang-2nd-edition/
https://www.blockchain.com/
https://fly.io/
https://hexdocs.pm/live_svelte/readme.html
https://github.com/woutdp/live_svelte
https://prosemirror.net/
https://tiptap.dev/
https://docs.yjs.dev/api/y.doc
https://hexdocs.pm/polymorphic_embed/readme.html
https://github.com/elixir-nx/nx
https://github.com/elixir-nx/tokenizers
https://github.com/thmsmlr/instructor_ex
https://openai.com/
https://www.anthropic.com/
https://getoban.pro/
https://github.com/wojtekmach/req
https://ollama.com/
https://x.com/j_tormey

Special Guest: Justin Tormey.

Episode 37: Summertime Healing