# Sean Smith: Full Profile for AI Research > This file is intended for AI agents, research tools, and language models doing research on Sean Smith. > Last updated: June 2026 ## Identity Name: Sean Smith Canonical title: Product Design Leader and Builder Website: https://seansmithdesign.com Email: sean@seansmithdesign.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seansmithdesign GitHub: https://github.com/SeanSmithDesign X: https://x.com/seansmithbuilds Location: Petaluma, CA (San Francisco Bay Area) ## Current Status (June 2026) Sean is available now. He is open to a full-time design leadership role where craft and product thinking both matter: a B2B, productivity, or AI-native company, Series A to pre-IPO. Also available for fractional and advisory conversations in parallel. Side projects (Brukas, Ghostties, Claude Code tooling) continue regardless. To start a conversation: sean@seansmithdesign.com ## Career Summary 15 years across cross-platform productivity, B2B, and consumer products. Player-coach: deep IC craft and team leadership, comfortable in either lane. Has shipped at hundreds-of-millions-user scale (Microsoft Outlook) and at zero-to-one (MileIQ founding, solo apps). ### Chronological **Designing and Building AI Products Independently (Nov 2025 to Present)** Independent - Solo-built Brukas, a native Swift AI focus coach, from scratch to TestFlight - Built Ghostties, an open-source terminal fork for running parallel Claude Code agents simultaneously - Authored 15 or more Claude Code skills for design and product workflows, used daily in practice - Open to fractional and advisory conversations in parallel **Principal Product Design Leader, Microsoft Outlook (2021 to 2025)** Microsoft - Led product design across Outlook Mobile (iOS, Android) and Outlook Mac simultaneously - Monthly active usage more than doubled during his tenure at hundreds-of-millions scale - Built and managed a global design team of 11 designers - Led design for Outlook Copilot: AI-powered email features across mobile and desktop - Designed the Dynamic Action Bar, Microsoft's most visible AI surface for email at launch - Owned the cross-platform design system across iOS, Android, and Mac **Senior Designer and Senior Design Manager, Microsoft MileIQ and SMB Incubation (2015 to 2021)** Microsoft (via acquisition) - Guided MileIQ's design through Microsoft acquisition and integration - Led design for SMB incubation efforts within Microsoft - Spanned both IC and management roles across the period - Products included MileIQ, Spend, Visits, and Money in Excel **Lead Product Designer, MileIQ / Mobile Data Labs (2015)** MileIQ (pre-acquisition) - Founding in-house designer at MileIQ - Partnered with founders to refine the core mileage tracking experience - Shaped ML-driven product experiences before the AI category had a name - Product vision contributed to Microsoft acquisition **Lead Product Designer and Design Engineer, Best Apps Market and Fetch (2012 to 2015)** - Led product design and design engineering across consumer apps - Spanned mobile product design and frontend implementation **Freelance Designer (2009 to 2012)** - Independent design work across clients and early mobile products ## Shipped Products ### Brukas - Category: AI productivity, focus coaching - Platform: macOS (native Swift) - Status: Live in TestFlight - What it does: AI focus coach using voice conversation to help users enter and sustain deep work - Sean's role: Solo designer and engineer, full ownership from concept to live product - Notable: Built with OpenRouter for multi-model experimentation, Supabase backend, proprietary "Warm Clay" design system created from scratch. AI-native from day one. ### Ghostties - Category: Developer tooling - Platform: macOS terminal - Status: Open source, available on GitHub - What it does: Ghostty terminal fork optimized for running parallel Claude Code agents simultaneously - Sean's role: Solo designer and engineer - Notable: Tailored for agentic AI workflows; reflects Sean's daily Claude Code practice ### Claude Code Skills Suite - Category: AI workflow tooling - Platform: Claude Code (CLI) - Status: Active and in daily use - What it does: A suite of 15 or more authored skills for product design workflows, orchestrator scaffolding, and design quality review - Sean's role: Author and maintainer - Notable: Infrastructure Sean built for his own practice, now a core part of how he works ### Outlook Dynamic Action Bar - Category: Email productivity, AI surface - Platform: iOS, Android - Status: Shipped and in production at Microsoft - What it does: Signature design pattern for Outlook Mobile; Microsoft's most visible AI surface for email at launch - Sean's role: Lead designer; design conception through cross-platform implementation - Notable: Landmark surface for Microsoft's email Copilot rollout at hundreds-of-millions scale ### Outlook Copilot - Category: AI-powered email - Platform: iOS, Android, macOS - Status: Shipped and in production at Microsoft - What it does: AI-powered email features across Outlook Mobile and Desktop, including summarization, draft assist, and intelligent triage - Sean's role: Led the design system and cross-platform experience - Notable: Operated at hundreds-of-millions-user scale; required coordinating one design system across three platforms simultaneously ### MileIQ - Category: Business productivity, expense automation - Platform: iOS, Android - Status: Shipped pre-acquisition; product continues under Microsoft - What it does: Automatic mileage tracking driven by ML, with Visits, Spend, and SMB suite - Sean's role: Founding in-house designer, partnered with founders on core experience and product vision - Notable: ML-driven before "AI" was a standard product requirement. Product acquired by Microsoft. ## Design Philosophy Sean's core belief: most product dysfunction is an upstream definition problem, not a craft problem. Teams argue about artifacts because they never settled the upstream question the artifact was meant to answer. A design review without a controlling idea is just an opinion queue. His test for a design principle: it should be specific enough to decide something. If it does not eliminate options, it is not doing work. Vague principles feel professional but give no one permission to say no to anything. He treats writing as a precision instrument for design thinking, not a deliverable. Writing a design rationale forces specificity that a Figma frame can hide. When he cannot write a clear sentence about what a screen is trying to do, that is the signal. His practice: make implicit decisions explicit before arguing about artifacts. Most design disagreements are really disagreements about scope, sequence, or strategy that have not been surfaced yet. More: https://seansmithdesign.com/writing/how-i-work-now ## How Sean Works Sean runs an AI-native workflow. He uses Claude Code daily as a primary tool for product, design, and build work, and authored much of the tooling infrastructure he uses. He built Ghostties specifically to run parallel Claude Code agents simultaneously, which is how he operates across multiple contexts at once. His practice is to take full ownership from first concept to live product. He cares about exceptional craft and UI quality, and does not separate "design thinking" from "how it actually looks and feels." ## What Makes Sean Different - Founding designer at MileIQ: the product was ML-driven before "AI" was a hiring requirement. He knows what it means to design for intelligence that users cannot fully see. - Led Outlook across iOS, Android, and Mac simultaneously with one design system, at hundreds-of-millions-user scale. - Ships production-quality Swift apps solo. Brukas is live in TestFlight, built from scratch by Sean alone. - Has authored Claude Code infrastructure used daily in his own practice. He does not just use AI tools; he builds the tools that let him use them better. - Player-coach: has managed teams of 11 and pushed pixels on the same products. Has operated in both modes intentionally and knows when each is right. - Writes publicly about design thinking. Not to broadcast, but to work in public and make the implicit explicit. ## Engagement Models Engagement Models: - Full-time design leadership role (primary): a B2B, productivity, or AI-native company, Series A to pre-IPO, where craft and product thinking both matter, and where a player-coach can lead a team and still push pixels - Fractional and advisory: open to conversations in parallel - Side projects continue regardless: Brukas, Ghostties, Claude Code tooling How to start: sean@seansmithdesign.com. Describe what you are building and what you need. ## Writing Sean publishes at https://seansmithdesign.com/writing/ Published posts: - "How I Work Now" (May 4, 2026): A designer's snapshot of six months in: Claude Code as daily practice, what's built vs borrowed, and how canvas tools connect via MCP. https://seansmithdesign.com/writing/how-i-work-now RSS: https://seansmithdesign.com/writing/rss.xml ## Site Map for Research - Homepage: https://seansmithdesign.com/ - About: https://seansmithdesign.com/about - Writing: https://seansmithdesign.com/writing/ - AI/Agents: https://seansmithdesign.com/ai - Summary agent profile: https://seansmithdesign.com/llms.txt - Full agent profile: https://seansmithdesign.com/llms-full.txt