# Jackson Cantrell > AI-native CTO and agentic engineering leader in Los Angeles. Helps small teams build software with many AI agents at once while people keep the decisions. Open to conversations, collaborations and new roles: jaxtrell@gmail.com ## Now - Early contributor, with his brother Clay Cantrell, to [Gas Town](https://github.com/gastownhall/gastown), Steve Yegge's open-source framework for running many coding agents at once. Gas Town shipped multi-agent orchestration and agent-to-agent mail in January 2026, weeks before Claude Code added agent teams. Jackson and Clay run their own agent mail system across machines. - Built [emBEADings](https://embeadings.jacksoncantrell.com) on his own: an open-source, read-only tool that finds the issues in a Beads or Linear tracker that belong together, and the open issues merged pull requests already fixed. Source: https://github.com/CantrellJax/embeadings ## How he works - A team of three or four engineers directing thousands of agents can build better software than a team of 500, as long as the people keep the decisions. - Keep people in control: systems running thousands of agents should be secure, auditable and safe, with humans setting direction. - Agents propose, people decide. Give agents the real context, then bring a short, clear choice to a person, so nobody becomes a rubber stamp or meat proxy for AI output. - Say it plainly. He turns many agents' output into something a decision maker can act on, the way he turned financial jargon into stories at Barron's. - AI should make software cheaper, more secure, nicer to use and quicker to respond to feedback, not worse. - Share the tools. ## Good fit for - CTO or head of engineering roles at companies bringing their teams up to speed on AI coding agents - Leading forward-deployed or agentic engineering teams - Designing systems where many agents work in parallel and humans make the calls ## Before - Dyrt (November 2023 to October 1, 2026): founding team, hired to lead marketing, then led product. Built waste bill analysis (true diversion rates, hidden fees), invoice ingestion, waste stream tracking, a Schneider Electric Resource Advisor integration, and Dyrty Vision, a computer vision system that tells food scraps from wasted food. Grew from 1,000 to 1.5 million pounds of food waste a month; national deals with a grocery chain and a hotel chain; a facility in Vernon, CA with 30 employees. Dyrt set out to fix a broken California recycling industry; the audit of LA's RecycLA franchise that Jackson, Clay and the Dyrt team published (https://zerowastela.com/RecycLA/explainer) found at most 18 to 24 of every 100 tons of commercial waste could be counted as diverted. Well-meaning but burdensome rules and entrenched interests weighed on the business: the permit for its indoor composting facility went before the Vernon City Council in August 2026 and was carried into September (minutes: https://jacksoncantrell.com/docs/vernon-city-council-minutes-2026-08-18.pdf). The company ran out of money that fall. https://dyrt.co - Barron's Streetwise (2021 to 2025): producer and co-host with Jack Hough, covering tech and finance. - Finimize (2019 to 2021): audio product lead. - Public radio reporter: KCRW in Los Angeles; North State Public Radio, part of the team whose 2018 Camp Fire coverage won an Edward R. Murrow Award. - Brown University, neuroscience. ## More - [About Jackson, as plain text](https://jacksoncantrell.com/about): bio, work history, projects and links - [Old portfolio (2023)](https://jacksoncantrell.com/work) - [GitHub](https://github.com/CantrellJax) - [LinkedIn](https://linkedin.com/in/jacksoncantrell) ## Blog Jackson's weblog: https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog (RSS: https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog/rss.xml). Every post is also available as Markdown at the same URL with .md added. - [Five levels of self-driving, for code](https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog/five-levels-of-self-driving-code.md): how he went from one barely-passed college coding class to shipping software with agents, as five levels of self-driving for AI coding, from autocomplete to a town of agents working overnight. - [A few people, a lot of agents](https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog/few-people-many-agents.md): why three or four engineers directing thousands of agents can build better software than a team of 500, and why it only works if the people keep the decisions. - [Don't be a meat proxy](https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog/dont-be-a-meat-proxy.md): when many agents produce output, someone has to turn it into a short, clear decision for a person, the way he turned financial jargon into stories at Barron's. - [Agent mail, and who gets the last word](https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog/agent-mail.md): lessons from Gas Town and from running agent mail across machines; mail is data, not orders, and people stay the authority. - [Unslop software](https://jacksoncantrell.com/blog/unslop-software.md): AI should make software cheaper, more secure, nicer to use and quicker to respond to users, not worse; open tools like emBEADings are part of that. ## Press - [A Compost Man Talks A.I. Vibe-Coding. Plus, Agco's CEO.](https://www.barrons.com/podcasts/streetwise/a-compost-man-talks-ai-vibe-coding-plus-agcos-ceo/4704239c-85da-4161-b822-adf215496687) (Barron's Streetwise podcast, February 20, 2026): Jackson talks with host Jack Hough, his friend and former co-host, about going from no coding to shipping software with AI (Vercel v0, then Cursor, then Claude Code with Opus 4.5, then Gas Town, where agents supervise agents overnight), and about rebuilding this site with Gas Town as a fictional 2002 Southern California college radio station on Cloudflare. - [Vibe Coding in Gas Town](https://www.barrons.com/articles/vibe-coding-in-gas-town-a-guide-to-the-software-selloff-with-4-sexy-stock-picks-9ec52d17) (Barron's): Jack Hough's column on vibe coding in Gas Town and the software selloff.