QuickBEAM
run JavaScript as supervised Erlang/OTP processes
Details
- External ID
- 47558094
- Source
- HN
- Company
- —
- Product
- QuickBEAM
- Website domain
- github.com
- Launched
- March 28, 2026
- Cohort
- —
- Upvotes
- 113
- Upvotes percentile
- 0.9194341943419434
- Tags
- —
- Fetched at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
- Updated at
- Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Description
QuickBEAM is a JavaScript runtime embedded inside the Erlang/OTP VM.If you’re building a full-stack app, JavaScript tends to leak in anyway — frontend, SSR, or third-party code.QuickBEAM runs that JavaScript inside OTP supervision trees.Each runtime is a process with a `Beam` global that can: - call Elixir code - send/receive messages - spawn and monitor processes - inspect runtime/system stateIt also provides browser-style APIs backed by OTP/native primitives (fetch, WebSocket, Worker, BroadcastChannel, localStorage, native DOM, etc.).This makes it usable for: - SSR - sandboxed user code - per-connection state - backend JS with direct OTP interopNotable bits:- JS runtimes are supervised and restartable - sandboxing with memory/reduction limits and API control - native DOM that Erlang can read directly (no string rendering step) - no JSON boundary between JS and Erlang - built-in TypeScript, npm support, and native addonsQuickBEAM is part of Elixir Volt — a full-stack frontend toolchain built on Erlang/OTP with no Node.js.Still early, feedback welcome.
Enrichment
- Theme
- niche developer utilities and toolchains
- Vertical
- Horizontal
- Function
- Dev tools
- Audience
- Developer
- AI stance
- Not AI
- Project type
- Hobby / open-source project
- Normalized one-liner
- run javascript as erlang/otp processes
- Manually corrected
- False
Could you build this?
No Embedding a JavaScript runtime like QuickJS inside the Erlang VM as an OTP-supervised NIF requires deep systems programming, C/Rust, and internal Erlang runtime/scheduler concurrency knowledge.
What it would actually take: A real implementation requires writing Erlang NIFs (Native Implemented Functions) in C or Rust (e.g., using Rustler) to bridge a lightweight JS engine like QuickJS with the BEAM VM. The developer must ensure JavaScript execution yields properly to avoid starving BEAM reduction schedulers, wire Erlang message-passing semantics into the JS event loop, and manage foreign memory boundaries cleanly. This demands specialized expertise in language runtimes and low-level BEAM internals.
Discussion
16 comments analyzed.
Competitors mentioned: QuickJS-NG, Node.js packages/modules, Other polyglot runtimes
Concerns raised: Sandboxing robustness for untrusted JS code, Supervision semantics when JS runtime crashes, Memory errors and process isolation guarantees
Feature requests: Seccomp support for additional defense-in-depth, Native C++ addon support beyond pure JS
Competitors
Other products that read as similar to this one — 114 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.
Attention rank: #8 of 115 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).
Launched 144 days after the earliest competitor.
- Script: JavaScript That Runs Like Rust · hn · 2026-01-27 · 6 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- LemonBeam · ph · 2026-09-25 · 2 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Typical is TypeScript with type-safety at runtime · hn · 2026-01-11 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.43
- Ant · hn · 2026-05-09 · 8 upvotes · similarity 0.42
- Nectar, a Rust-like React that compiles to WebAssembly · hn · 2026-07-06 · 29 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- JSON to TypeScript Interface Converter · ph · 2026-09-15 · 1 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- Firefox in WebAssembly · hn · 2026-07-15 · 273 upvotes · similarity 0.41
- GrainJS · hn · 2025-12-26 · 5 upvotes · similarity 0.40
Other launches for this product
- No other launches for this product.
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