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Projects

Frontier projects you can take on with us.

Real, paid, 1-3 week engagements with the Product.ai team. Each one is a problem we are working on right now - at the frontier of AI, design, engineering, growth, and the surfaces commerce is being rebuilt on. We publish them so the right people can find us.

How a project happens

A short screen, a chemistry call, then the work.

Most of our best people came through projects, not interviews. So we made the project the front door.

You apply. We do a 12-minute video screen. If it looks like a fit, a chemistry call. Then a 1-3 week engagement on a real project, paid at your rate, working alongside the team.

Most common path
You are considering a role here.

Ship the project well and we offer a role. If we exit, you keep the work history and the pay. No "we will keep you in mind."

Alpha Team path
You are already in our orbit and want to ship something.

Pick a project marked open to Alpha Team. Same scope, same pay, same access - minus the role conversation. You ship, you go.


Open projects

What is open right now.

Curated by the team. The diamond marks projects we consider consequential - the ones that meaningfully shape a system or a surface, not just produce an artifact.

Discipline

Design

6 open
Read more about Design at Product.ai
Verification Confidence Indicator — calibrated trust UI across chat, MCP, and extension
2 weeks · Product.ai + Consumer experience · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
A small, generalizable UI component that shows how confident Product.ai is in its own answer, with the evidence trace one click away.
Experience Paradigm v0.1 — define what verified-truth commerce feels like as a consumer experience
3 weeks · Product.ai + Consumer experience · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
A founding designer's first attempt at the question "what does verified-truth commerce feel like for a consumer?" Output is a working v0.1 of the Product.ai experience — chat + verdict surface — that a non-technical shopper can use end-t...
Multi-Surface Trust Pattern Library — how trust signals travel across web, chat, MCP, and extension
2 weeks · Product.ai + Brand · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Audit the four Product.ai surfaces (web, chat, MCP, extension) for how each currently signals trust.
SimplyCodes Verification Layer — surface verified-truth physics inside the consumer commerce engine
2 weeks · SimplyCodes + Product.ai · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Take the verification primitives Product.ai uses (verdict states, evidence trace, confidence calibration) and adapt them for SimplyCodes.
Hello-World Audit + Top-3 Ships — read the surfaces, ship your three highest-leverage calls
1 week · Product.ai + SimplyCodes · Foundational Open to Alpha Team
A first-week orientation project that doubles as a high-signal diagnostic.
Agent Confidence-Signaling Component — how Alloy speaks confidence to other AI agents and to the human in the loop
2 weeks · Agent commerce + Truth Graph · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Design and ship a confidence-signaling component for Alloy — Product.ai's local-first agentic workbench.

Engineering

5 open
Read more about Engineering at Product.ai
LLMAdapter Constitutional Implementation — thin sovereignty across one Product.ai backend surface
2 weeks · Engineering + Product.ai · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Define and ship the `LLMAdapter` interface as Product.ai's constitutional pattern for talking to model providers.
Per-PR Cost Ledger + Agent-Policy Metadata — Day 1 substrate for safe agent deployment across the Product.ai repos
2 weeks · Engineering + Cortex · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Build the two artifacts a backend platform should ship before opening agent deployment to the team: (1) per-module agent-policy metadata declaring agent-allowed / agent-allowed-with-mock / agent-forbidden across each Product.ai backend r...
Trace-to-Regression-Test Pipeline — close the user-feedback loop with a 24-hour SLA
2 weeks · Engineering + Product.ai · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Build the production pipeline that converts user-flagged failures into regression tests against a 24-hour SLA.
External MCP Server v1 — Product.ai's commerce-knowledge query endpoints exposed for AI agents
3 weeks · Agent commerce + Product.ai · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Design and ship Product.ai's external-facing MCP server v1 — the surface AI agents (Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini agents, custom agents) call to query verified commerce knowledge.
Cron Job Health Audit + Consolidation — survey ops/cron, ship the consolidation, instrument the health surface
2 weeks · Engineering + Cortex · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Audit the cron jobs in `ops/cron/` — every active job, every silently-failed job, every duplicate, every overlapping ownership.

AI Systems

14 open
Read more about AI Systems at Product.ai
Production Eval Harness — error-analysis-first failure taxonomy on Product.ai chat or Alloy
2 weeks · Product.ai + Truth Graph · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Build a production eval harness for one Product.ai surface (chat or Alloy).
Verification Ladder + Back-Pressure Hooks — close the deterministic gate on one Cortex or AIOS agent workflow
2 weeks · Engineering + Product.ai · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Audit one agentic workflow inside Cortex or AIOS — a cron-triggered skill, an autonomous pipeline, a sub-agent fan-out — and ship the deterministic verification ladder on it.
Cost-Split Multi-Model Routing — make Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus do their actual jobs across one cron pipeline
2 weeks · Engineering + Product.ai · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Pick one Cortex or AIOS cron pipeline that currently calls Opus 4.7 on every step and refactor it to cost-split routing — Haiku 4.5 or Sonnet 4.6 for routine sub-steps, Opus 4.7 only on escalation, advisory, or synthesis steps.
External Truth Anchor — /feedback channel for Product.ai chat or Alloy that reaches engineering Slack within 60 seconds
1 week · Product.ai + Engineering · Foundational Open to Alpha Team
Ship an in-product `/feedback` channel for one Product.ai surface (chat or Alloy).
MCP Throughput Refactor — diagnose and fix the protocol-overhead trap on a Product.ai backend MCP path
2 weeks · Agent commerce + Product.ai · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Audit one Product.ai MCP server for protocol overhead, request shape, and unit economics at production load.
Sub-Agent Orchestration with Worktree Isolation — refactor one Cortex or AIOS workflow into the engineer-plus-agent-fleet pattern
2 weeks · Engineering + Cortex · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Pick one Cortex or AIOS workflow currently running sequentially (or with naive sub-agent dispatch) and refactor it into the engineer-plus-agent-fleet pattern.
SimplyCodes Working-Code-Rate Lift — drive measurable improvement on the verification accuracy metric
2 weeks · SimplyCodes + Revenue · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Pick one mechanism limiting SimplyCodes' working-code rate (currently 67%) or the surrounding 96% availability metric.
Cross-Surface Eval Taxonomy — design the measurement system from scratch on one Product.ai surface, prove substrate-builder phenotype
2 weeks · Product.ai + Truth Graph · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Pick one Product.ai surface (Alloy, Cortex memory, SimplyCodes code-verification, or Product.ai chat).
Layer 4 Human-Decision Compliance Instrumentation — measure adoption-decay and override patterns on one Product.ai surface
3 weeks · Product.ai + Truth Graph · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Build Layer 4 instrumentation on one Product.ai surface — the surface where the agent's recommendation reaches a human and the human acts on it, overrides it, or ignores it.
Procedural Integrity Audit — measure the corrupt-success tax on one Product.ai agentic workflow
2 weeks · Product.ai + Truth Graph · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Take one Product.ai agentic workflow (Alloy, ARC application-layer if accessible, signal-step-executor, an AIOS skill that fans out sub-agents).
SimplyCodes Conversion Attribution Model — replace heuristics with a defensible attribution stack
2 weeks · SimplyCodes + Revenue · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Replace SimplyCodes' current conversion attribution heuristics with a defensible attribution model.
AIOS Skill Creation End-to-End — build one new skill through /skill-create, register it properly, prove the skill compounds
1 week · Engineering + Cortex · Foundational Open to Alpha Team
Build one new AIOS or Cortex skill end-to-end.
CEO-Bottleneck Agent Workflow — automate one workflow currently bottlenecked on Michael's bandwidth
2 weeks · Cortex + Engineering · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Identify one workflow currently bottlenecked on Michael's bandwidth — Slack inbox triage, Gmail processing, meeting prep, decision-support synthesis, signal classification, claim curation, or another concrete pattern.
Builder Trial End-to-End — pick one Product.ai problem and ship the agent-based solution
2 weeks · Product.ai + SimplyCodes · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Pick one concrete Product.ai problem — a SimplyCodes operations workflow, a Cortex curation pattern, an AIOS team-coordination gap, an Alloy edge case.

Product

6 open
Read more about Product at Product.ai
SimplyCodes State-of-Product Memo + Three Bottleneck Problems — Day 30 Phase 0 deliverable for the first SimplyCodes PM
1 week · SimplyCodes + Revenue · Foundational Open to Alpha Team
Write the "State of SimplyCodes Product" memo.
Production-Trace Failure Taxonomy — review 100 traces, build the eval substrate from real failures
2 weeks · Product.ai + SimplyCodes · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Pick one Product.ai surface (chat, Alloy, or SimplyCodes' code-verification fleet).
Anthropic Postmortem Calibration + Product.ai Eval-Bypass Mitigation — diagnose one equivalent risk and ship the gate
2 weeks · Product.ai + Engineering · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Read the Anthropic April 23, 2026 Claude Code postmortem end-to-end.
SimplyCodes Conversion-Uplift Initiative — pick one quantifiable lever, ship the experiment, measure the result
2 weeks · SimplyCodes + Revenue · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Pick one quantifiable conversion lever on SimplyCodes.
Agent Commerce PRD v1 — write the spec for one external-facing MCP capability with eval criteria scoped correctly
2 weeks · Agent commerce + Product.ai · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Write the v1 PRD for one external-facing MCP capability — the surface other AI agents will call to query Product.ai's verified commerce knowledge.
Six-Month SimplyCodes Roadmap with Two Kill Decisions — Day 90 Phase 0 deliverable
2 weeks · SimplyCodes + Revenue · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Build the six-month SimplyCodes product roadmap.

GTM

11 open
Read more about GTM at Product.ai
Contrarian-Depth Essay — produce one Dwarkesh-Patel-style 2,500-5,000 word piece grounded in Product.ai proprietary data
2 weeks · Brand + Product.ai · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Produce one contrarian-depth essay, 2,500-5,000 words, grounded in Product.ai proprietary commerce-AI data, ARC verification benchmarks, or internal usage data.
Authority Infrastructure Buildout — Reddit/Quora presence, review-platform profiles, link-velocity strategy for AI citation lift
3 weeks · Brand + Product.ai · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Build out authority infrastructure across the surfaces that empirically drive AI citation lift.
Agent-API Recommendation Attribution (Layer 2) — instrument the recommendation-decision moment
3 weeks · Product.ai + Agent commerce · Consequential Open to Alpha Team
Build Layer 2 instrumentation — the API gateway agent attribution layer that captures which AI agents (Claude Code, Cursor, ChatGPT, Gemini, custom agents) recommend Product.ai or SimplyCodes APIs in their reasoning loops.
Content-as-Code Substrate Migration — HTTP content negotiation across Product.ai surfaces, hygiene-layer only
2 weeks · Product.ai + SimplyCodes · Applied Open to Alpha Team
Implement HTTP content negotiation universally across product.ai, simplycodes.com, and the developer-doc surfaces.
Skincare First-Verdict Conversion Funnel Instrumentation
2 weeks · Product.ai + Revenue · Consequential
Product.ai's first GTM beat ("Your Health, Verified" — skincare, sunscreen, supplements) targets a May 31 launch, and the FULL-JOURNEY outcome (1,100 impact points, the highest in the consumer-experience pillar) requires ≥25 tracked purc...
MLP Conversion Lift A/B Framework — PYO vs Legacy Head-to-Head
2 weeks · SimplyCodes + Revenue · Consequential
The MLP-CONVERT outcome (600 impact points, revenue-fortress pillar) requires "PYO MLPs show statistically significant conversion lift ≥15% vs.
Multi-Surface Behavioral Retention Telemetry — Cross-Surface Return Mechanics
2 weeks · Product.ai + Revenue · Consequential
The MULTI-SURFACE outcome has 2 of 3 required surfaces live (Product.ai Website + ChatGPT App), with Desktop Extension Research Mode shipping and Mobile App next-zone.
Forge the Verified Commerce Category — positioning architecture for the buyer who does not yet have the words
3 weeks · Brand + Product.ai · Consequential
Product.ai is occupying a category that does not have a name yet.
Build the Developer-First GTM for Product.ai MCP — surface developers, not search engines, as the new top of the funnel
3 weeks · Agent commerce + Product.ai · Consequential
The agent commerce kernel is explicit: Product.ai's defensible position is to become the verified commerce intelligence layer that every AI agent calls before a purchase decision.
Architect the Skin Health Vertical Launch — audience-first GTM beat for Product.ai's first verified-commerce category
2 weeks · Product.ai + Consumer experience · Consequential
Product.ai's GTM Sequence calls out skincare, sunscreen, and supplements as Beat 1 (May 2026).
Design Product.ai's AI-Era Discovery Architecture — citation surface and tool surface as parallel disciplines
2 weeks · Product.ai + Brand · Consequential
The single most consequential cross-discipline finding from the Apr 28 Frontier Practice 2026 corpus: in any AI-mediated marketplace, the surface where AI **mentions** a product (citation surface) and the surface where AI **invokes** a p...

The four steps

From application to working with us, in about three weeks.

01
Apply

12-minute Hireflix video, async. Questions are calibrated to the project you applied for.

02
Chemistry call

30-60 minutes with a senior team member, usually the CEO. No problem-solving exercise.

03
Project (1-3 weeks)

1099 contractor, paid at your rate. Day 1 onsite for setup. Then remote work alongside the team.

04
Decision

Within 2-3 days of trial end. Offer, one extension on a different project, or a clean exit.

Alpha Team members skip steps 1 and 2 and go straight to project, where the project is marked open to Alpha Team. The decision step still happens at the end - but it is about the work shipped, not a role offer.


Calibration notes

A few things to know before you apply.

Not warnings. Just the things that tend to surface in trial sessions, said plainly so neither of us is surprised.

Process vs. shipping
The team starts on the work and documents what was learned afterward. If your strong preference is the other order, you will feel under-supported here.
Depth matters
We care about the system underneath the surface as much as the surface itself. Beautiful artifacts that do not operate from physics tend not to land here.
Push back on us
If we framed the project wrong, we would rather you tell us in week one than ship exactly what we asked for. Compliance is not the signal we are calibrating against.
Tooling
Claude Code or Claude Co-work, plus whatever else you need. We will get into why on the chemistry call.

Apply

If one of the projects is the kind of work you would want to be doing this month, send a screen.

Twelve minutes. We will know within a week whether to move forward. We are a team of about 25 today, growing slowly and intentionally - most of our best hires came through exactly this path.