AshTherapy

An AI-powered therapeutic chat service built with the Ash Framework and Phoenix.

This repository contains the companion code for a series of blog posts published on AppSignal exploring the Ash Framework ecosystem, including:

• Ash Core - Domains and Resources
• Ash Oban - Background job processing for AI responses
• Ash Notification - Real-time client notifications
• Ash AI - Structured AI response handling
• Ash TypeScript RPC - Type-safe frontend integration

This series is written by Shankar Dhanasekaran, author of Domain Modelling with Ash Framework, a comprehensive guide to building robust Elixir applications with Ash.

This project demonstrates how to build a complete business domain using Ash's declarative approach to modeling resources, relationships, and actions.

What is AshTherapy?

AshTherapy is a demo application that showcases the power of the Ash Framework by implementing a therapeutic chat service where:

1. Users can start conversations with specific goals or motives
2. They exchange messages with an AI companion
3. All interactions are tracked and persisted through Ash resources

Architecture

The application is built around three core Ash resources in the AshTherapy.Therapy domain:

• User - Represents users of the service
• Conversation - Represents therapy sessions with goals and status tracking
• Message - Represents individual messages in a conversation (sent by either user or AI)

All business logic, validations, and database operations are defined declaratively using Ash's DSL, following the principle: "Declare once, derive the rest".

Prerequisites

• Elixir 1.15 or later
• PostgreSQL 14.17 or later
• Node.js (for asset compilation)

Local Setup

1. Clone the repository and install dependencies:

   git clone https://github.com/devcarrots/ash_therapy
   cd ash_therapy
   mix deps.get

2. Setup the database:

   mix ash.setup

   This command will:

   • Create the database
   • Run all migrations (generated from Ash resources)
   • Run seeds if any

3. Install and build assets:

   mix assets.setup
   mix assets.build

4. Start the Phoenix server:

   mix phx.server

   Or start with an interactive Elixir shell:

   iex -S mix phx.server

   Now you can visit localhost:4000 from your browser.

Testing the Domain and Resources

You can interact with the Ash resources directly through IEx to understand how the domain works:

iex -S mix

Create a User

user =
  AshTherapy.Therapy.User
  |> Ash.Changeset.for_create(:register_user, %{name: "Nisha"})
  |> Ash.create!()

Start a Conversation

conversation =
  AshTherapy.Therapy.Conversation
  |> Ash.Changeset.for_create(:start_conversation, %{
    goal: "I want to handle work stress",
    user_id: user.id
  })
  |> Ash.create!()

Send a User Message

user_message =
  AshTherapy.Therapy.Message
  |> Ash.Changeset.for_create(:send_message, %{
    content: "I feel anxious every Monday morning.",
    conversation_id: conversation.id
  })
  |> Ash.create!()

Send an AI Reply

ai_message =
  AshTherapy.Therapy.Message
  |> Ash.Changeset.for_create(:send_message, %{
    content: "That sounds difficult. What usually triggers this feeling?",
    conversation_id: conversation.id,
    role: :ai
  })
  |> Ash.create!()

Fetch Conversation with All Messages

full_conversation =
  AshTherapy.Therapy.Conversation
  |> Ash.Query.for_read(:get_conversation_with_messages, %{id: conversation.id})
  |> Ash.read!()
  |> List.first()

# Inspect the conversation and its messages
full_conversation.messages

Project Structure

lib/
├── ash_therapy/
│   ├── therapy.ex              # Ash Domain
│   └── therapy/
│       ├── user.ex             # User resource
│       ├── conversation.ex     # Conversation resource
│       └── message.ex          # Message resource
├── ash_therapy_web/
│   ├── controllers/
│   ├── components/
│   └── ...