R. Hou stabilized the build process for the apple/axlearn repository by addressing a critical dependency management issue involving NVIDIA NCCL and CUDA12. Using Python and package management skills, R. Hou pinned the nvidia-nccl-cu12 package to version 2.27.5, preventing the jax[cuda12] package from introducing incompatible updates. This targeted bug fix improved build reproducibility and reduced CI flakiness, ensuring consistent CUDA12 compatibility across development environments. The disciplined approach to dependency pinning provided clear traceability at the commit level, supporting future audits. While the work focused on a single bug, it demonstrated depth in Python-based dependency and package management practices.