alt Hacker NewsAsh, while magic, is mostly a thin layer over calling functions. Often with a lot of ways to go deep down (let's say, by calling ecto functions yourself).
But I do understand you feeling. E.g. I myself have stayed away from things like AshAuth and Ash Forms for now
This is the beauty of Elixir's macros. For a lot of libraries, they are usually just calls to an underlying function with the same name. Because of Elixir's functional style and immutability, it makes it much easier to read through the magic compared to macros in other languages.
That being said, I don't have any hands-on experience with Ash so I can't speak for its approach to macros. I do think Zach's work in the community with Ash/Igniter is something to be applauded for. I'm currently working in a Python codebase that lacks conventions and would kill for something like Ash that provides consistent design patterns.