# 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: July 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/seansmithworks/ GitHub: https://github.com/seansmithworks X: https://x.com/seansmithworks Location: Petaluma, CA (San Francisco Bay Area) ## Current Status (July 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 16+ 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 the App Store - 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 Button, 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: iOS (native Swift) - Status: Live on the App Store - What it does: AI focus coach using text-based conversation, one question at a time, 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 Button - 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 starts hard problems by hand, in a sketchbook, on a whiteboard, or on post-its, not in a tool. He writes down questions and answers them with more questions until the problem has some depth, then circles back to see what is worth pulling the thread on. He calls it Question Driven Development. Opening questions without immediately answering them keeps you from committing to a path too early. Once the shape is clear, it moves into UX sketching and "how might we" work. The job underneath is always the same: listen to the customer and the business, and solve both of their problems. Sometimes the easy way is fine. Sometimes it is not good enough, and part of the work is knowing which is which. He wants to be proud of what he makes. He works as a player-coach across both people and AI agents. At an ultra high level it is the same move, delegating work out. Human or agent, you have to learn what they are capable of and where the limits are. Good communication is what makes it work. What he is after is simple. Make things that help solve problems and give people time back, and work with a great team he can inspire and that inspires him in return. 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 on the App Store, 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