AI Agent Architect

Xingyao Wang Portfolio

CS PhD candidate at UIUC and co-founder/Chief AI Officer of All Hands AI; lead creator of OpenHands (formerly OpenDevin), an open platform for coding agents that interact with a computer the way a human developer would, and of CodeAct, an ICML 2024 paper arguing agents should express actions as executable code rather than fixed-format tool calls.

Coding AgentsAgent ActionsMulti-Turn Tool UseOpen Source

What makes it work

A breakdown of the choices that make this portfolio stand out.

1

A specific, arguable position on how agents should act

CodeAct's central claim — that letting an agent write executable code as its action space outperforms constraining it to predefined JSON tool calls — is a concrete architectural bet, not a neutral survey of options, and it changed how several later agent frameworks structure tool use.

2

A benchmark for the failure mode that matters most in practice

MINT specifically evaluates multi-turn interaction with tools and language feedback, targeting the realistic case where an agent must recover from an initial mistake using feedback, not just succeed on the first try.

3

A research lab and a company built around the same architecture

Founding All Hands AI to build OpenHands on top of the same research (CodeAct, SWE-Gym) shows a direct, visible line from the academic contribution to a fielded product, rather than the two being disconnected.

What AI Agent Architects can take from this

Specific, actionable tips to apply to your own portfolio — no generic advice.

  • Take a specific, defensible position on a core architecture question (like how agents should represent actions) rather than presenting a neutral menu of approaches.

  • Design your evaluations around realistic failure recovery, not just first-try success — it's a harder and more useful bar.

  • When your research produces a genuinely better architecture, consider building the product around it yourself rather than only publishing the finding.

Ready to build your portfolio?

Follow the AI Agent Architect roadmap — skills, projects, and timeline to get hired.

AI Agent Architect Roadmap