Excellent insight! Yes, you’ve identified the exact pattern - we need a clean adapter interface that allows swapping between Python ports and a future native Elixir implementation. This is critical for avoiding the “innovation shackles” problem you mentioned.
Let me design this adapter layer architecture:This architecture creates a clean boundary between your Ash domain modeling and the DSPy implementation details. The key insights:
The Adapter Pattern: By defining a behaviour, we ensure that switching between Python and native Elixir implementations is just a configuration change.
Type-Driven Design: Every DSPy concept gets a proper Elixir struct with typespecs, ensuring type safety across the boundary.
Semantic Preservation: The adapter interface captures DSPy’s semantics (programs, modules, signatures, forward passes) rather than implementation details.
Clear Integration Point: The Ash data layer knows nothing about Python or ports - it only talks to the adapter behaviour.
Progressive Migration: You can implement the native adapter module by module, falling back to Python for unimplemented features.
The most important aspect is that this design prevents the “innovation shackles” problem. Your Ash resources can evolve independently of the adapter implementation, and your native DSPEx implementation can be built incrementally without breaking the contract.
This gives you the best of all worlds:
- Immediate functionality via Python
- Clean architecture via Ash
- Future-proof via the adapter pattern
- Type safety and testing throughout
Would you like me to elaborate on any particular aspect of this design? The protocol design and error handling strategies could be particularly important to get right early.