Principal technologist and open-source leader, now building and contributing to open-source AI, hands-on.

I've spent two decades at the intersection of technology, policy, and public service, including leading the U.S. federal government's Open Source Program Office (Code.gov). These days I'm going back to the code: learning modern AI from the source up and contributing to the open-source projects building it.

• Building a federal agentic AI practice by day, contributing to open-source AI by night.
• Going deep on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), agent frameworks, and LLM tooling.
• Shipping small, useful PRs (accessibility, docs, and bug fixes) across projects I actually use.

AI & LLM tooling

• OpenHands: provider configuration fix in the agentic coding UI
• Aider: scripting documentation fix

Public sector & open data

• code.gov (GSA): schema and content fixes
• USWDS (U.S. Web Design System): Community Contributor; accessibility, PR review, and issue triage
• CKAN: accessibility fixes to the open-data platform behind catalog.data.gov
• Datasette: a11y improvements
• government.github.com: maintaining the government GitHub org listing

I use AI coding assistants to get up to speed on unfamiliar codebases quickly. I read, run, and take responsibility for everything I submit, and if a patch of mine is wrong, that's on me. Reviewer time is the scarcest resource in open source, and I try hard not to waste it.

• VP, Technology Solutions at HumanTouch, LLC: leading AI engineering and agentic-AI workflows on the CORASai platform in collaboration with federal agencies, carrying two decades of open-source and gov-tech leadership into the AI era
• Maryland Governor Appointment to the Council for Open Data: supporting the State Chief Data Officer (CDO) on implementation of SB0200/HB0262 by working with state agencies and local governments to meet the Governor's priorities
• Director, Code.gov: ran the federal Open Source Program Office (OSPO) and grew federal open-source participation from 45 to 7,000 repositories across 20 agencies. Brought the platform into Section 508 compliance and added automated accessibility testing to its CI pipeline
• The White House (Executive Office of the President): developed M-13-13 Open Data Policy Supplemental Guidance and implemented the President's Digital Strategy
• Contributor to federal open-source and AI policy, including the Federal Source Code Policy (which became the SHARE IT Act, signed into law in 2024) and OMB M-24-10
• GitHub Star, 2021-2024 · Fed100, 2019
• PhD, Public Administration and Public Affairs. Dissertation: An Organizational Analysis of Publishing the People's Code

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jrcastle

_{Learning in public, contributing to the open-source AI ecosystem one PR at a time.}