Current Projects

DollhouseMCP

Website: dollhousemcp.com | GitHub: DollhouseMCP/mcp-server | License: AGPL-3.0

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for dynamic AI persona management. Hot-swap Personas, Skills, Templates, Agents, and Memory Elements without restarting. Works with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, ChatGPT, Gemini, and other MCP-compatible systems.

Dollhouse Research

Website: dollhouseresearch.com | Profile: people/mick | ORCID: 0009-0008-7116-1393

The research side of the work: building systems that make AI expertise, process, memory, and tools reusable, open, and easy to combine. Current threads include agent architecture, reliability under failure, and the measurement apparatus needed to make claims about either one hold up.

Elemental Surveys

Website: elementalsurveys.com | Work samples: elementalsurveys.com/work

Synthetic-first market research. Fast synthetic survey reads that pressure-test concepts, messaging, and audience assumptions before the expensive commitment is made, for teams that need signal while the idea is still movable.

AILIS

GitHub: DollhouseMCP/AILIS | DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21398506

An AI Layer Interface Specification: a proposed sixteen-layer reference model for the AI stack, in the spirit of what OSI did for networking. The bet is that a shared vocabulary for where capabilities sit makes it easier to see what is missing. Early draft, open for argument.

Merview

Website: merview.com | GitHub: mickdarling/merview | License: AGPL-3.0

Client-side Markdown editor with live Mermaid diagram rendering. Drag-and-drop files, multiple themes, print/PDF export. No backend, no tracking.

Mick Darling Consulting

2016 - Present | Greater Boston Area

I think any new projects I take on will be heavily AI and development focused.

Mainly focused on Product, Strategy, and Business Development. I’ve worked on many projects across multiple categories: video production and distribution, AI, ML, VR, AR, XR, blockchain, fantasy sports, social media, video clipping, video overlay and editing tools, e-commerce, content recognition, and others.

My broad knowledge set and network in the media technology space along with always trying to keep up to date on how the newest tech can best be deployed and made productive has been key to succeeding with client projects.

Selected Projects

Tomorrowish

“The First Social Media DVR”

Captured, filtered, synced and replayed social media messages associated with TV shows, enabling time-shifted social viewing experiences.

Partnerships:

  • truTV - “Social Playback” feature (CableFAX Awards finalist)
  • FOX / FOX Now
  • E! Entertainment - Social tool for “Opening Act”
  • Hulu - Premium content integration

Accelerators: Turner MediaCamp, MassChallenge

Alliance of American Football

Director of Product - Web | Jan 2019 - Apr 2019 | San Francisco, CA

Managed the Product team for website (ranging from 4 to 7 engineers and designers) for The Alliance of American Football (AAF.com) building out a full featured sports league website with stats, news, live telemetry, streaming video, video on demand, an online store, site security, internal web tools, and more.

Managed the creation of new React based site with custom CMS and design in 4 weeks that streamed two simultaneous live professional football games getting over 1M users per day opening weekend. Managed the development of features and design of a novel new synchronized play-by-play display and web based scoreboard during the live video stream of games and for replayed videos of games.

Managed Analytics group within AAF to produce weekly web and mobile analytics reports for CEO and Board Chair. Worked with stakeholders across the company in Sales, PR, Marketing, Content, Football Ops, Biz Ops, Broadcasting, and Engineering to address and balance their needs for the site and internal web tools. Worked with web team to manage deployment of major features at least weekly, and often multiple major updates per week.

TVDuffle

Cofounder / CEO | Aug 2014 - Apr 2016 | San Francisco Bay Area

Born out of a hackathon win at TVOT (TV of Tomorrow). Built a mobile e-commerce app that identified your favorite musicians, sports teams, and other content, then automatically generated travel packages for concerts, sporting events, and related experiences.

Endorsements

“Mick came in during crunch time and managed our site conversion from WordPress to React. In a matter of two months he built one of the most advanced live sporting events web sites in the world. He successfully managed difficult relationships with vendors and other stakeholders, and also brought in extra talent to help get the job done.”

— Mike Naquin, Founder & CEO, timehack.ai

“His was the first company that integrated our synchronization API to build a two screen experience for a major TV broadcaster (back in 2010). He has a deep understanding of both the legacy TV business and the directions it needs to move.”

— Erik Schwartz, Streaming Video Expert

“Mick has a deep understanding of a broad array of emerging technologies, but in particular has a strong expertise in all aspects of the media and television industries. One of Mick’s many gifts is that he can not only delve into the technical aspects of product or service, but also taps into his extensive entrepreneurial background to evaluate and articulate the business opportunities and strategies.”

— David Barron, Technology and Product Commercialization Leader

Patents

Four patents in NLP and social media synchronization, assigned to Tomorrowish LLC:

  • US 10,733,195 - Discovering keywords in social media content (August 2020)
  • US 10,614,074 - Scoring social media content (April 2020)
  • US 10,607,299 - Displaying social media content (March 2020)
  • US 10,528,573 - Discovering keywords in social media content (January 2020)

Play

The other half of the title. Ideas worth an afternoon and some order-of-magnitude math, whether or not they go anywhere.

Orbital Lifeboats

Site: lifeboats.mickdarling.com | GitHub: mickdarling/orbital-lifeboats | Write-up: Napkin math for space rescue

During the war, both sides anchored rescue buoys out in the English Channel so a downed pilot only had to make it to the nearest float. Could you do the same thing as we start populating the solar system? Turns out orbital mechanics flips the whole idea: the lifeboat has to come to you, and what is worth caching is time, not fuel.

Think Like an Alien Engineer

2016 | Read: 10.5281/zenodo.21399117

Written while everyone was arguing about whether Tabby’s Star (KIC 8462852) was aliens. That struck me as the less interesting question. The better one is: if it were built, what would the engineering have to look like, and what would that force to be true?

The missing infrared is the part worth chasing. Block a star and the energy has to go somewhere, so either you are looking at mirrors or at re-radiation pointed somewhere other than at us. Reasoning through those two options under orbital-mechanics constraints lands on a testable prediction, which is directional infrared emission at the edges of any structure during occultation.

Same habit as the lifeboats, eight years earlier.

Hackathons

  • TV Travel App Hackathon - Grand prize + 4 category awards. Built an iPhone app detecting what you were watching and providing travel booking for locations shown on screen.
  • AT&T Hackathon (CES) - Location-aware Bluetooth beacon app with verbal guidance via text-to-speech.
  • 2014 TVOT Hackathon - Winner.