Michael Carroll
Data product manager, Brooklyn
I build data products for AI, write about spec-driven development, and help small businesses put AI to work through my consulting practice.
About
I build data products for capital markets where AI tools and machine learning systems are the primary consumer, lead four product teams that ship software through spec-driven development, and sit on my firm's AI council for global banking.
I am a data product manager at a major U.S. bank, and my career interest is fintech and data. I studied statistics and finance at Carnegie Mellon University, have been fortunate enough to see startups grow from A to D rounds, and traded quantitatively at a couple of funds along the way. One of my teams is fully AI-engineered through spec-driven development, and I was a featured AI presenter at the firm's innovation week. Specs I write ship directly into production, turning week-long processes into hours and quarter-long roadmap work into weeks.
Outside of work, I am building apps, writing books, and volunteering with education organizations. I also love movies, Formula 1, cooking, and BBQing.
Latest writing
An American Team on an American Sunday
Cadillac lines up in Austin today as the first new Formula 1 team in a decade, having paid a reported 450 million dollars for the right to start from nothing. Why the price is rational, and what team, then rules, then driver predicts for them.
What Kind of Change Is This?
Specs need version numbers as much as code does, and the number should be decided by rule, not by mood. A small script that reads two versions of a document and says major, minor, or patch, with reasons.
Productized SDD vs the Real Thing
A public plugin now hard-codes most of what I do by judgment: a design gate before code, plans for a junior engineer, fresh subagents per task, test-first. Where the rigid version is right, and where lived practice diverges.
What I am building
A live view of my current projects, updated automatically as they move.
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Health Story
Turns clinical and wearable data into a plain-language health narrative.
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Natural Yield
Carbon accounting and profitability for Australian farmers.
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Natural Yield Mobile
React Native mobile app for Natural Yield (iOS + Android)
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North Bound
A product-management app built on one North Star metric per product.
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TripDeputy
Turns the links you save for a trip into a day-by-day plan. #1 on StartupBase, October 18, 2026.
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Modern Curriculum Games
A portfolio of mobile games, from quick puzzles to life-skill learning.
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Timeline MCP
A Model Context Protocol server over a Google Maps Timeline export: place visits and movement, queryable by an AI assistant.
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The Accents of Faith
Why morality is older than God, and what that means for all of us.
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The Human Curriculum
Rebuilding education for the age of AI.
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Same Time Next Week
A new book, in early drafting.
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The Meeting Historian
A guided notebook for preserving the history of an AA meeting.
Work with me
I take on two or three engagements at a time, for owners and executives of businesses with ten to two hundred people, outside the financial sector. Fixed scope, fixed price.
Capture Sprint
Paperwork that gets retyped by hand, turned into a working pipeline, in two weeks. Year-end rate for the next five engagements booked by December 31.
Spec Review
A build-ready specification for one AI idea, in about a week.
Blueprint Sprint
A specification and a working prototype, in two weeks.
Fractional product lead
A few hours a week steering your product effort, $4,000 to $6,000 a month.