Ramine Darabiha · AI-native product builder

Hi, I'm Ramine Darabiha

Founder · AI-native product builder

I build and operate complete products with AI, end to end: native audio, hardware emulation, an agentic archive, WebXR. Before that, consumer products downloaded billions of times.

I care about products that expand human agency, reward craftsmanship, and make difficult technology feel natural.

AI-native product development

Since June 2026 I have shipped six systems, each with one accountable owner: a native macOS live-audio system, a Game Boy sound-chip emulator with a cartridge compiler, an agentic family archive, a publishing compiler, a developer catalogue, and a WebXR gallery. Each runs from research and design through engineering, infrastructure, verification, launch, and operation. A specification is not a product and a feature is not a system; the part between them is the part I own.

How the practice works

  • PartyParty — Public beta. A native macOS and browser audio system that captures any Mac output and delivers 320 kbps LL-HLS to guests' iPhones against one fixed room target, selecting between venue-local and cloud-relayed paths through a five-state machine, with no guest app or account. Scope: Product strategy, interaction and visual design, native macOS app, Go streaming and relay architecture, guest web experience, Cloudflare infrastructure, testing, distribution, and operations
    Visit product · View source · Join the TestFlight beta
  • Darabiha — Live. An agentic private family archive that reads multilingual source documents, reconciles people and relationships against an evidence graph, and makes audited changes under family control. My scope: Product strategy, archive reconstruction, data modeling, privacy and access design, interaction design, full-stack engineering, AI workflows, infrastructure, migration, testing, and operations
    Visit product
  • Retro Porting Toolkit — Live. A collaborative publishing system for static recompilation, mapping ahead-of-time game translation, runtimes, hardware platforms, native ports, and the people building them. My scope: Product, positioning, information architecture, design, web engineering, publishing system, and editorial workflow
    Visit product · View source
  • Chiptunes.app — Live. A register-level emulation of the Game Boy sound chip in the browser, a deterministic composer that writes complete songs for it, and an exporter that turns any of them into a 32 KB cartridge image, an LSDj song, or a MIDI file. The browser path and the cartridge path are checked against each other register write for register write on an emulated CPU. Scope: Product, interaction design, audio systems, engineering, infrastructure, launch, and operations
    Use it · Follow the build · View source
  • ramine.net: AI-First Publishing — Production system. A Git-backed, AI-native publishing system built around a typed content graph, deterministic two-site compilation, fully prerendered routes, and agent-operable editorial workflows. Scope: Research, product strategy, information architecture, design, engineering, infrastructure, QA, launch, and publishing operations
    Visit product · Follow the build
  • Spatial Gallery — Live. A dual-mode WebXR portfolio that runs as a gaze-and-pinch room-scale gallery on Apple Vision Pro and as the same real-time 3D scene on mouse and touch browsers. Scope: Product, spatial interaction design, WebXR engineering, performance, media delivery, and launch
    Open project · Follow the build

About me

I build complete products, and I have built the teams that build them. My product sense runs from the system to the surface: architecture, interface, infrastructure, and release are work I do myself, not work I only direct. I get there early, often before there was a company to join: [a cloud OS](/projects/browser-based-os) in 2008, [IPFS](/topic/open-web) in 2016, [AI email agents](/projects/ai-email-workflows) in 2020, [decentralized identity](/topic/consumer-identity-architecture) in 2021, [agentic commerce](/projects/ai-store-manager) in 2025.

I helped pioneer [games as a service](/topic/games-as-a-service)[src](cite:talk-halfbrick-portfolio,talk-gdc-f2p-to-indie,data-gdc-talk-2015), leading R&D and product on [Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, and Fruit Ninja](/topic/angry-birds-fruit-ninja), 3 of the 10 most-downloaded games of all time[src](cite:press-cult-of-mac-ios-ranking,data-fruit-ninja-1b,data-angry-birds-1b). I worked in live-games portfolios of 50+ titles with billions of downloads.[src](cite:press-pocketgamer-storm8-portfolio,data-fruit-ninja-1b,data-angry-birds-1b)

Recognition

Selected past works

  • AI Store Manager: An AI agent built to run the whole business behind a page: catalog, checkout, shipping, fulfillment. A working MVP, ahead of the agent wave.
  • Spatial Gallery: A dual-mode WebXR portfolio that runs as a gaze-and-pinch room-scale gallery on Apple Vision Pro and as the same real-time 3D scene on mouse and touch browsers.
  • Chiptunes.app: A register-level emulation of the Game Boy sound chip in the browser, a deterministic composer that writes complete songs for it, and an exporter that turns any of them into a 32 KB cartridge image, an LSDj song, or a MIDI file. The browser path and the cartridge path are checked against each other register write for register write on an emulated CPU.
  • Games as a Service: Built Halfbrick's product function and turned Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride, and the whole catalog into live services. The flagship passed a billion downloads.
  • Product on Angry Birds: PM on the biggest mobile game in the world: platforms, ads, location, partnerships, and a toys-to-life unlock years before Amiibo.
  • ramine.net: AI-First Publishing: A Git-backed, AI-native publishing system built around a typed content graph, deterministic two-site compilation, fully prerendered routes, and agent-operable editorial workflows.
  • Identity Systems: User-owned identity, social-login wallets, and a gasless social rollup that Tezos core developers called the first of its kind.
  • Retro Porting Toolkit: A collaborative publishing system for static recompilation, mapping ahead-of-time game translation, runtimes, hardware platforms, native ports, and the people building them.
  • AI Email Agents: Rules, scripts, and actions that let software act safely on your inbox. An agent product shipped before agents were the pitch.
  • Browser-Based OS: A web desktop with files, apps, publishing, and identity, used by roughly 72 million people before the browser-as-OS was a category.
  • Decentralized Music & Social: DNS.xyz: one social login gave you a wallet you own, a portable identity, and a place to publish and sell directly to fans. Four surfaces, one platform on Tezos.
  • PartyParty: A native macOS and browser audio system that captures any Mac output and delivers 320 kbps LL-HLS to guests' iPhones against one fixed room target, selecting between venue-local and cloud-relayed paths through a five-state machine, with no guest app or account.
  • Darabiha: An agentic private family archive that reads multilingual source documents, reconciles people and relationships against an evidence graph, and makes audited changes under family control.
  • Experimental Technology: 50+ prototypes across AR, procedural generation, new inputs, and the open web. R&D pushed until the novelty became play.
  • Direct-to-Fan Music Platform: Artists publish, build community, and sell directly to fans. Some earned materially more here than streaming paid them.
  • Smart Wallets: Sign in with Google or Twitter and get a non-custodial wallet you genuinely own. Account abstraction hidden behind a normal signup.
  • Hyperminter: Drop in your art, edit metadata in bulk, mint the whole set in one click. The most-used batch minter on Tezos.
  • Soundmojis: Collectible characters with sound, designed like premium toys you want on a shelf, not assets you wait to flip.
  • The Consuming Shadow: Produced Yahtzee Croshaw's first commercial game, a Lovecraftian procedural horror. Very Positive on Steam, with one shot to get it right.
  • A Change of Heart: A 48-hour jam win: an endless runner you steer with earphones in your pocket, used backwards as a motion sensor.
  • Game Design for Music Drops: Leaderboards, collector tiers, and unlockable perks on a Kane Mayfield drop. Game design pointed at fandom.

Talks

  • The Internet as an Extended Mind (TEDxHelsinki, 2014): Taking David Chalmers' extended mind seriously: memory, search, and recall already moved outside the skull. What that changes, and what to protect.
  • Beyond Spotify: Direct-to-Fan Music (Industry talk, 2022): It takes roughly 600,000 streams a month to earn minimum wage. The case for direct-to-fan, and the platform we built for it.
  • Design Patterns for the DWeb (DWeb Camp, 2019): Product and UX discipline for protocol-heavy systems: how the decentralized web starts feeling like software people choose.
  • Publishing on the Decentralized Web (IPFS Camp, 2019): What a creator-owned Substack could look like on content-addressed infrastructure: consumer publishing for the permaweb.
  • Design Deep Dive on IPFS apps (IPFS Camp, 2019): What an IPFS app needs before normal people can use it: hide the hashes, the peers, and the pinning behind a real product.
  • Building the Finnish Startup Ecosystem (Stanford GSB, 2015): How Finland built a startup ecosystem out of culture and student energy, and what other regions can copy from it.
  • Why Europe Needs a Sovereign Cloud (Finnish Parliament, Internet Forum, 2010): Cloud, privacy, and digital sovereignty are product and infrastructure decisions, not just policy. Argued in Parliament in 2010.
  • Rebooting a Four-Year-Old Game to the Top of the App Store (GDC, Smartphone & Tablet Games Summit, 2015): How a four-year-old game most studios would sunset went back into the U.S. top 20, and the live-ops playbook it produced.
  • Collaborate to Innovate (Queensland Government, Industry Briefing, 2015): Briefing the Queensland Government on Halfbrick Academy: students placed inside real production on globally shipped games.
  • From Free-to-Play to Indie (GDC, Independent Games Summit, 2016): Which billion-download habits help an indie game, and which ones quietly kill it. Lessons from producing The Consuming Shadow.
  • Angry Birds on the Web (Assembly Summer, Helsinki, 2011): Bringing Angry Birds to the browser when a web game still meant a banner ad: the open web as a real games platform.
  • Building the Best Product Team in Mobile Games (The Family): Roles, cadence, and operating model: building the product function behind a mobile games portfolio. In French, at The Family.
  • Reaching the Top 10 of the App Store (The Family): The playbook that takes a game into the App Store's top charts, told for a room of founders. In French, at The Family.

Articles

Availability

Available for roles where one accountable person owns a product end to end: architecture, interface, infrastructure, launch, and operation.

ramine@ramine.net