Michael Gifford-Santos

Michael Gifford-Santos

AI / founding product engineer

I build AI products end to end — the agents, the infrastructure, the interface, and the brand.

Seattle — relocating to the SF Bay Area

imagine.
See the work

Ask it anything

Talk to an agent I built. It runs this page.

Real-time voice over WebRTC, grounded in nothing but my résumé, with its tools wired to the DOM — so when it tells you about something, it takes you there. Tap the mic, or type if you’re somewhere you can’t talk.

It only knows what’s on my résumé, and it’s built to say so when it doesn’t know. The production version →

Built and operating

All work, including Drydock, GentlePrep, Span and E Pluribus →

15+ statesschools served, on a team that never exceeded two engineers
#8 → 100+joined Center as engineer eight; left past a hundred people
~15services operated, with runbooks and written postmortems
4apps live in the App Store and Google Play

How I work

Design, code, business — the triple threat is the point. The fundamentals come from years of shipping; the speed comes from orchestrating AI agents that build, test, and validate, recursively. The stack is whatever the problem needs.

Product design · Brand identity · UI/UX · Full-stack & mobile · Voice interfaces · Distributed systems · AI-orchestrated development

Previously

  1. 2021–24

    Ordo — founding engineer & first hire

  2. 2020–21

    Ensembl — full-stack engineer

  3. 2017–20

    Center — senior SDE, Center Expense · acquired by American Express

  4. 2012–17

    Dodecki — founder & CEO

Specification, then artefact

A coat of arms is a spec that outlives its implementation.

A blazon is text — unambiguous, style-free, and older than any drawing of it. Hand the same sentence to ten artists and you get ten shields that are all correct. I have spent fifteen years doing the same thing with software, which is why this is the mark I have used since 2004.

  1. The blazon

    Azure, a chevron argent, in chief a lion passant argent, a canton gules, within a bordure or.

    Formal description. Written once, in the 14th century’s own terms.

  2. As a spec

    field: #30347achevron: #d1d3d4lion: #d1d3d4canton: #bc282ebordure: #fff200

    The same sentence, read as structure. Every clause is a field.

  3. The draught

    Geometry only. Where each charge sits, before any colour is chosen.

  4. The arms

    One implementation of that spec. Mine, drawn in 2004.

What is drawn here is the escutcheon — the shield alone. The complete achievement carries three more clauses: Crest: a mullet of seven points or · Supporters: on the dexter a horse rampant argent, on the sinister a bear rampant proper · Motto: Imaginare, upon an escroll.

Note what is not there: no helm, no compartment, and not a word about where the scroll sits or whether the supporters stand on it. That is the artist’s business, not the blazon’s — and it is exactly the line I try to hold in a spec. Say what must be true; leave the rest to whoever implements it.