I’m Axl. I’m interested in people, in ideas, and in the work of understanding and making things.
I’m Axl, a Nous Research contributor working on Hermes Agent. I created adversarially verified transformation and apply it to engineering, code review and system analysis. My background also spans data, finance, historical research, teaching, business operations and professional kitchens.
I’m a Nous Research contributor working on Hermes Agent. My contribution is currently unpaid; I am not a maintainer. I work with data, AI, and the questions that make complex systems worth understanding.
My history also includes research into corporate social responsibility, an MBA in finance, teaching and student support, wholesale tea accounts across 31 states, and years of culinary craft and restaurant leadership. These are parts of one life, with room for what comes next.
I lived and worked in Chicago, and I would love to live there again. Waukesha is my current base; Chicago is my preferred place for the next chapter.
I earned an MBA focused on finance at Johnson & Wales University, after an interdisciplinary honors degree at UW–Madison. Later, I completed approximately two-thirds of an MS in Data Analytics. The MS degree was not completed.
This site brings those different parts of my life together. You can read the papers, explore the projects, and see the work and people behind the résumé.
I lived and worked in Chicago, and I would love to live there again. Chicago is still part of me →
My academic work explored corporate responsibility and the purposes of liberal education. Teaching, editing, and helping new students navigate university life were part of that experience.
Research & teachingI’m a Nous Research contributor working on Hermes Agent. My contribution is currently unpaid; I am not a maintainer. The public record through 2026-10-29T10:10:43Z captures 510 PRs and 470 issues I authored, plus 2,698 submitted formal reviews across 1,314 distinct PRs. These overlapping forms of participation include architecture, implementation, diagnosis, and review; record counts are not a count of merged features or defects prevented. My recorded Hermes activity began July 7, 2026. July was a partial month with 3 authored PRs and 1 formal review; August recorded 438 authored PRs and 972 formal reviews; September recorded 59 authored PRs and 1,135 formal reviews; October 1–29 is a partial month with 10 authored PRs and 590 formal reviews at the same cutoff. The mix shifted from intensive authoring toward architecture-grounded review. Formal reviews are submissions, not a count of unique defects or pre-merge fixes. My expertise is adversarially verified transformation. My most substantial ongoing codebase contribution is an architecture-grounded model for reviewing other contributors’ code, including maintainer PRs: trace ownership, authority, state, failure paths and consumers; identify the exact reviewed version; reproduce the defect; and require real-path correction receipts. Root-cause analysis and subsystem analysis investigate the system beyond a proposed diff and are distinct parts of my work. Specific public reviews led to fixes before merge, while other cases led to post-merge repairs or rollback. Contributors retain implementation credit and maintainers retain merge authority. I created graph-gated engineering. My work spans authored implementation, architecture, diagnosis, and review—with credit for the people involved.
Current workWholesale accounts across 31 states at Rishi Tea. Launching live phone support at Holden QiGong. Business study and practical work that depends on organization and communication.
Business & operationsBread, pastry, original menus, service, and kitchen leadership are part of my working life too. They belong here as their own body of experience.
Craft & hospitality“Andrex is a smart and kind human being.”
Stephanie Izard
Winner + Fan Favorite of Bravo’s Top Chef Season 4 and Food Network judge
Stephanie Izard on curiosity, judgment, leadership, communication, and the person behind the work.
See the original & read the letter