Elixpo: An Open-Source Ecosystem That Started as a College Initiative (and Its Blogging Platform You Can Contribute To)

Bhumika Sudarshani — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 16:04:07 +0000

What is Elixpo?

Elixpo began in 2023 as a small college initiative. Today it is an open-source ecosystem of 9+ interconnected tools for creating, writing, drawing, searching and building on the web, shaped by 45+ contributors around the world.

The belief behind it is simple: AI and great software should be open, ethical and free for everyone. Every tool is open source and free to use, with no paywalls, no premium tiers and no sign-up walls on the public tools.

A few numbers from the journey so far:

9+ open-source projects built and deployed
45+ global contributors
20+ hackathons participated in
Part of programs like GSSOC, Pollinations.AI and OSCI
Recognized by MS Startup Foundations with funding in 2024

The ecosystem at a glance

Tool	What it does
Elixpo Blogs	A rich, modern writing and publishing space
LixSketch	A hand-drawn style whiteboard for ideas and diagrams
Elixpo Search	Fast, AI-assisted search
Elixpo Accounts	One identity (SSO) across the ecosystem
lixrl	A URL shortener
Portfolios	Personal pages to showcase your work

Some tools, like Elixpo Art and Elixpo Chat, are still under development.

The people behind Elixpo

Elixpo is made by people, in the open. 45+ contributors have shaped these tools, with a small core team steering the way:

Ayushman Bhattacharya, Founder & Lead (@Circuit-Overtime)
Vivek Yadav, Lead Co-Dev (@ez-vivek)
Anwesha Chakraborty, Core Maintainer (@anwe-ch)

Spotlight: Elixpo Blogs

Elixpo Blogs (LixBlogs) is a free, open-source blogging platform for creators, developers and teams. Live at blogs.elixpo.com.

What you get:

Rich block editor with 20+ block types: code, LaTeX math, Mermaid diagrams, tables, embeds, sub-pages
AI writing assistant: press Space on an empty line to generate text and images
Real-time collaboration with live cursors and presence
Organizations and teams, with roles and collections
Auto-save and cloud sync, so drafts are never lost
Media uploads auto-compressed to WebP
Library and bookmarks for saving and organizing posts

Under the hood

For the engineers reading this, here is the stack:

Frontend: Next.js 15 and React 19, with the editor built on BlockNote
Real-time sync: Yjs (CRDT) over WebSockets to Cloudflare Durable Objects
Edge infrastructure: Cloudflare Pages and Workers, D1 for the database, KV for caching
Auth: Elixpo Accounts (SSO)

The editor is also published separately as @elixpo/lixeditor on npm, plus a VS Code extension, so you can drop the same editor into your own React app:

npm install @elixpo/lixeditor @blocknote/core @blocknote/react @blocknote/mantine

Run it locally

npm install
npm run dev

Then open http://localhost:3000. Create a .env.local first with your development credentials. See the README for the details.

Everyone is welcome to contribute

This is the part I care about most. No matter your experience level, you are welcome here.

You don't need to start with a big feature. Some real ways to help:

Fix a bug or improve the editor UX
Improve docs and the README
Test the platform and report issues
Pick up a good first issue
Suggest features you'd want as a writer

Repo: https://github.com/elixpo/blogs.elixpo

A quick note on Hacktoberfest: in 2026 it moved away from counting pull requests and now focuses on open-source AI events, so I'm not promising swag for PRs. What I can promise is real code review, real feedback, and a project you can point to in your portfolio.

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct before you start, and comment on an issue before working on it so we avoid duplicate effort.

Let's build it together

Elixpo grew from a college project into a community because people showed up and built things together. If you've been waiting for a sign to try open source, this is it.

Which feature would you want in a blogging platform? Tell me in the comments.

DEV Community: Bhumika Sudarshani