Chris Tien · Product leader × builder

Product leadership, with working software.

I lead consumer mobile products at scale by day. By night, I run a one-person AI-native studio—shipping apps, building the systems behind them, and using code to turn product judgment into something people can actually use.

LinkedIn Enter the project lab
10+years building products $1Bcommerce platform supported 2apps live on the App Store 6native apps in development 4stages in the studio system 57web experiments shipped
01 / The studio

A system that compounds

The strongest artifact is not one app. It is the operating system that makes the next app faster, safer, and more considered.

Lead case · One-person AI-native app studio

From one prototype to a repeatable shipping practice.

The first web game became a native App Store launch. Its lessons became reusable product and engineering patterns. Those patterns became a project pipeline. A canonical context system and hand-built MCP connector now keep the work coherent across AI tools and across sessions.

This is how I think about AI-native product work: not as faster output, but as a system of taste, context, evaluation, and production discipline that improves each time it runs.

Read the build log See the apps
Prototype the thesisSmall web builds make the hard question tangible.
Graduate what earns itThe strongest concepts move into native production.
Capture the decisionsPatterns and context survive beyond any one AI session.
Reuse the leverageEach shipped product lowers the cost of the next one.
02 / Selected work

Proof, not a project dump

Five builds selected for what they demonstrate: AI interaction, systems thinking, and technical depth. The prototypes that graduated into native repos are shown further down, as the apps they became.

AI infrastructure · Personal MCP server

Cross Context MCP

Giving AI tools memory without giving them silent edit authority.

A zero-dependency Cloudflare Worker connects chat surfaces to one canonical, Git-backed context store. The deployed MCP layer provides structured recall and append-only write-back; its next iteration adds atomic, create-only scaffolding for new projects, streams, and ideas.

Command natural-language strategy gameNatural-language RTS

Command

Designing AI as part of the interaction model.

An RTS played through plain-English orders, with a deterministic parser for speed and an AI fallback for ambiguity.

Theme Lab design-system playground15 design systems

Theme Lab

Treating design language as a real system.

Fifteen interchangeable design systems applied to the same components and six complete example products.

CHIP-8 emulator and live debugger35 opcodes · live debugger

CHIP-8

Going below the product layer when the problem asks for it.

A complete virtual-machine emulator with all 35 opcodes, timers, sound, register inspection, and original ROMs.

AI Pulse model landscape dashboardLive model landscape

AI Pulse

Making a fast-moving domain legible.

A multi-source view of frontier releases, benchmark standings, ecosystem usage, and the news shaping the AI market.

03 / Native apps

Shipped, and what's building now

Two products are live on the App Store. Six more are under active development in their own repos—real engines and real test suites, not mockups.

Shipped and operating

Each one crossed the less glamorous mile: native production, App Review, and storefront operations.

Maze Tower Defense app icon
Live on the App Store

Maze Tower Defense

A native SwiftUI and SpriteKit strategy game where the maze you build is the strategy. Six buildings, three spells, five biomes, and a growing campaign.

iPhoneiPadMacSwift · SpriteKit
View on the App Store

In development

Active repos, built nights and weekends. Nothing in this band is on a storefront yet, and the status on each card says where it actually stands.

In development · native port

Sand Castle Survival

A shallow-water simulation written in pure Swift drives a finite-sand beach defense: dig, pile, and place while the tide takes back what you built. Strategy parity with the browser prototype is in; balance recording and versioned run saves are still open.

iPhoneSwift · SpriteKit
Play the web prototype
In development · first milestone complete

Pouch

A read-it-later app where screenshots and PDFs are first-class saves, not attachments. Vision OCR, PDFKit extraction, and a vendored Readability pass turn any capture into clean Markdown the reader keeps as plain, portable files.

iPhoneMacSwiftUI
In development · playable build

Warhost

Turn-based strategy where a city can fall to war, trade, or faith. All three run through one opposed loyalty model rather than three bolted-on systems, and 1,475 headless checks run against every change.

DesktopGodot 4GDScript
In development · early build

Arcade Machine

A native cabinet-select launcher that remasters games out of this site's lab—bundled locally, with native high scores and original marquee art. A headless harness boots and plays every cabinet on each commit.

MacSwiftUI · WKWebView
See the originals in the lab
In development · engine complete

Cats vs Dogs

A micro-RTS on a deterministic fixed-tick simulation: A* pathing with footprint clearance, twelve asymmetric units, and a crayon-doodle art direction drawn programmatically in Core Graphics instead of authored as assets.

MacSwift · SpriteKit
Prototype · running on fixtures

Worth It

Recent card charges, dealt one at a time, each getting a one-second gut verdict. The payoff is the one number no aggregator can compute: what you spent on things you would take back.

iPhoneSwiftUI
04 / Experience

Product work at both ends of scale

More than a decade across consumer mobile, commerce, and enterprise products—from first principles to platforms used at scale.

2023–present

Homes.com · CoStar Group

Director of Product Management, Mobile Apps

End-to-end product leadership for the Homes.com iOS and Android real-estate search experience, spanning native product, growth, engagement, analytics, and app-store operations.

2021–2023

Rocket Mortgage

Product Manager → Senior Product Manager, Mobile

Led growth, retention, origination, servicing, and platform capabilities for the flagship consumer mortgage app.

2017–2021

EY

Senior Consultant → Manager, Product Management

Led Royal Caribbean and Celebrity Cruises mobile work, then product delivery for a multi-channel commerce platform supporting approximately $1B in annual revenue.

2014–2017

Blue Chip Consulting Group → NRI North America

Consultant, Enterprise Apps & Product Delivery

Joined Blue Chip Consulting Group and continued with the firm after its acquisition by NRI North America, building products across healthcare, retail, transportation, and manufacturing—including the first native mobile app of the career arc.

Homes.com
CoStar Group
Rocket Mortgage
EY
Royal Caribbean
Wendy's
05 / Contact

Let’s build something worth operating.

I’m most interested in AI-native product work where product judgment, technical fluency, and real operating systems matter—not just a demo that happens to call a model.

Connect on LinkedIn Personal bio