Couldn't understand your comment well but I am making a SQLite library for Elixir (via Rust bindings) so that would be one less dependency on external systems. I happen to believe that most projects don't need a full-blown database server.
For Cowboy, what's wrong with the docs? Erlang translates to Elixir pretty cleanly (list comprehensions and records notwithstanding): prefix atoms with `:`, downcase variables, `%` maps, and `~c""` Erlang strings. If you're really itchy (as in the look of using atoms as modules makes you itchy), you can alias the Erlang modules as Elixir module atoms: `alias :cowboy_router, as: CowboyRouter`.
And using Postgres via Ecto is a bad thing, or? What was your point or a complaint?