Axel Verne
AI agents are only as good as what you ask of them.
I'm Axel Verne. I write the MCP series — the plain-English, hands-on guides to Model Context Protocol, in PDF + EPUB and on Amazon Kindle — plus the Hermes playbooks that started it all. No hype, no 400-page theory.
Three tips you can use in the next five minutes
The same principles behind the books — sized to fit in a coffee break.
Give the agent an exit
Agents fail loudest when forced to guess. Add one line to any task: "If the answer isn't in the provided material, say so instead of guessing." Hallucination drops immediately — and you find out what's actually missing.
Front-load the constraints
Don't bury the deadline, the format, or the word count at the end. Put every constraint in the first two sentences. Models weight openings heavily — the same request moved to the front measurably improves compliance.
Make it re-runnable
A good prompt is a tool, not a message. Save your best ones with placeholders — "Summarize {{URL}} in {{N}} bullets for {{AUDIENCE}}" — and reuse them. That's the difference between chatting and operating.
Get the 15-Minute Agent Setup Checklist
The exact 12-step setup that makes an agent useful on day one — exits, constraints, rails — in one printable page.
- 12 steps across honesty, obedience, leverage & rails
- Interactive — tick the boxes as you go, progress saved
- Free forever. No spam, unsubscribe anytime.
The MCP series — the main line
Model Context Protocol is the standard that gives AI assistants scoped hands on real systems — and these are the books that explain it without drowning you in protocol-speak. Both live on Amazon Kindle and here as PDF + EPUB, DRM-free, with free lifetime updates.
MCP for Business
Ninety minutes from "what is MCP?" to a 90-day plan you can defend in a budget meeting. No code, no jargon — the integration tax, the USB-C analogy, the five vendor questions.
- PDF + EPUB, instant download
- Facts checked against the official spec, Sept 2026
- Free lifetime updates
MCP for the Homelab
Teach your AI assistant to actually run your lab. First server tonight, the Paranoid Chapter, the error catalog, ten copy-paste recipes — and the repo is free and MIT either way.
- PDF + EPUB, instant download
- Read-only by default — yolo, but with a firewall
- Every chapter ends with Tonight's Homework
MCP for the MSP
The same protocol for the person who supports other people's computers for a living: tenancy, scoping, consent, rollback, and the audit trail — without becoming the breach story.
- Multi-tenant from page one — never shared state
- The tenant template + the MSA rider
- Writing queue now — first chapter free at launch
The Companion Repo
Ten MCP recipe stacks for your lab — filesystem, Docker, Home Assistant, Proxmox, Pi-hole and more. Smoke-tested: 12 passed, 0 failed.
- Two recipes run with nothing but Docker
- Same ritual every time: env, compose, stanza, ask
- MIT licensed, forever
Bonus shelf — the Hermes playbooks
The series that started this imprint: field-tested playbooks for getting real work out of the Hermes agent. Instant downloads — PDF + EPUB, no subscription, no seat limits. Every future update lands free in the same files.
Hermes Agent for Complete Beginners
Zero to a running agent without touching a terminal. Install, first tasks, safety rails, and the ten workflows everyone should start with.
- PDF + EPUB, instant download
- Written for day one, not day one-hundred
- Free lifetime updates
58 Prompts for Power Users
The full playbook: 58 field-tested prompts organized by job — research, writing, code, automation — each with when-to-use notes and failure modes.
- PDF + EPUB + searchable Prompt Library
- Every prompt re-runnable with placeholders
- Free lifetime updates
The Complete Collection
Both books together, plus the searchable library of all 58 prompts — one purchase, every future update included.
- Everything in both books
- One download, all formats
- $8 less than buying separately
Prefer whop? The same books live at Hermes Agent Playbooks on whop — with a free prompt library post and the community alongside.
What I actually run
I don't recommend tools I don't use daily. These are the picks that survived — each explained honestly on its own page.
⚙️ Hermes Agent
The agent the books are built around — local-first, scriptable, and the reason the prompt library exists.
🛠️ The official docs
Every install command and config option, straight from the source — the same references the books point to.
📚 The community & the lab
The Nous Discord for questions the docs don't answer, and Nous Research's site for where the agent is heading next.
Affiliate disclosure: some links on this site are affiliate links — if you buy through them, I earn a commission at no extra cost to you. I only link tools I use myself, and my books never require any of them.