Outcomes before capabilities
Useful AI starts with a consequential problem, an accountable owner, and a way to measure what changes.
AI product leader, builder, and writer
Dan Patrick Smith.
I lead AI product work inside a large, regulated enterprise — and build independent products to see where the technology is going before it gets there.
Read the field notes
01 / Current thinking
Three ideas I keep returning to.
A paved road for builders
The future is governed citizen development: more people solving problems within clear technical and human boundaries.
Read the case studyLeadership is leverage
The work changes when your judgment has to travel through people, portfolios, operating models, and culture.
02 / Writing
Notes from the middle of the change.
Essays about building useful AI, leading through uncertainty, and turning new capabilities into real systems.
01 2026 02 2026 03 2025 04 2024 05 2024
Agent skills
Unlocking Reusable Intelligence: What SKILL.md Files Are and How to Build Effective Agent Skills
Agentic engineering
On 'Vibe Coding'
Human-computer interaction
User Interface Evolution: From Punchcards to Conversations and Beyond
AI product quality
Regression Testing Probabilistic AI Systems: Precision, Recall, and F1
A personal detour
My Embarrassing Bitcoin Story
03 / Selected work
Things I have made real.
AI SkillsBank
A visual home for saving, versioning, organizing, and moving agent skills between AI tools. Built from a personal need during the first wave of persistent, tool-using agents.
Persistent agents at home
Two persistent agents run at home for months to find out where they earn their keep — and where agents end and deterministic software begins.
04 / About
I am interested in the point where technological possibility meets human reality.
I have spent 16 years inside a large, regulated enterprise, leading AI product teams across finance, supply chain, customer service, sales, and legal — and teaching rooms of 20 to 100 people what AI can and cannot do.
Outside the work, I am a husband and father of three. I make room for writing, hiking, biking, golf, Formula 1, and the occasional idea that refuses to leave me alone.
Currently on the shelf
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Output to Outcome: An Operating Model for the Age of AI
Mik Kersten
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Two Kinds of Truth
Michael Connelly