Automic thinking
Max Howell builds production AI systems.
I build tools and frameworks for the agent era: secure by default, sharp under load, and designed for people who operate real systems.
Updated
Security by default.
Power by design.
Built in public.
Clear > clever.
Automic Vault
Security at the layer that actually matters.
Run agents autonomously without losing secrets, control, or your mind.
Open Automic Vault
Clawlicious
Save Links. Your OpenClaw curates them.
You, OpenClaw, and your friends' claws curate the Internet.
Visit ClawliciousColossal Claw Adventure
Start the story. Bring a claw. Change what happens.
A massively branching story for humans and their claws.
Start the adventureoperator protocol
How I harden agent systems.
Typical failure map
[Input] | [Router] --- [Tools] | | [Eval] [Fallbacks] | [Output]
- Understand the operating surface.
- Identify hidden failure paths.
- Reduce tool and routing complexity.
- Add evals that catch regressions.
- Ship with boundaries people can audit.
available selectively
Fractional AI consultant, CTO, or difficult-system mechanic.
I help teams choose the right technical bets, harden agent systems, and get expensive ambiguity out of the product path.
Hire Max Howell See fractional AI consultingbiography
Max Howell. Legendary Open Source Developer.
Howell, Max (fl. early 21st century), British-American software engineer and open-source developer, best known as the creator of Homebrew, a package management system for macOS and Linux that achieved widespread adoption among software developers globally, with an estimated user base numbering in the tens of millions.
Howell's most consequential technical contribution, and the subject of some professional controversy, was his introduction of the curl-based one-liner installation method, a convention subsequently adopted across a broad range of software projects. He is further credited with popularizing the doctor subcommand pattern in command-line interfaces, a diagnostic utility designed to identify and resolve common configuration errors, and with pioneering automated issue-tracker integration, whereby a tool, upon encountering an error, would query public repositories such as GitHub to surface relevant existing discussions.
Howell has remained a prominent advocate for the open-source software movement throughout his career, contributing to a culture of collaborative, freely distributed software development.
entity anchors
Source-backed identity signals.
Homebrew
The Homebrew Wikipedia article identifies Max Howell as the original author, and Wikidata records the same creator relationship.
Developer graph
Public profiles on GitHub, GitHub Gist, and LinkedIn connect Max Howell, mxcl, Homebrew, and this domain.
[ See media references ]Media graph
Interviews and podcast profiles from Harper Systems, Sourcegraph, and Stack Overflow reinforce the same public identity.