N° 01 · A consultancy for texts, sources, software, & learners
Thoughtful AI and software
for complex problems.
We build AI systems and custom software for organizations ranging from universities, libraries, museums, and publishers to document-heavy businesses in law, research, and compliance.
N° 02 · About
A hapax legomenon
said once, and only once.
In textual scholarship, a hapax legomenon is a word that appears only once in a corpus, the kind of detail that rewards close reading and careful tools. We take the name seriously. Every project is treated as its own problem, shaped by the sources, the users, and the institution behind it.
Hapax Digital is the practice of Cole Crawford: currently a Staff AI Engineer focused on improving clinical trial software, and previously Senior AI Engineer at Wood Mackenzie and Senior Software Engineer at Harvard University Arts and Humanities Research Computing. We specialize in AI systems, document processing pipelines, and customized search and retrieval infrastructure. We build systems that researchers, educators, and businesses can actually use, maintain, and trust, with clear code, honest estimates, and an ability to combine the novel and durable.
N° 03 · Selected work
Organizations we've supported
N° 04 · How we work
Four principles
Named horizons
Novelty and durability exist on a spectrum. Choose to experiment, or build for the long haul: we scope horizons upfront and build to your goals.
Honest estimates
We scope what we can see and name what we cannot. No asterisks on the invoice.
Read before writing
Every engagement opens with close reading: the corpus, the users, the mandate.
Clear code
We leave a codebase your next developer can inherit without resentment.
N° 05 · Start