Senior Product Manager — Toronto

Matt Hughes

Data-driven product veteran, twenty years into shipping streaming platforms, SAAS products and AI solutions. Lately I've been building small, playable proofs to understand agentic AI as well as I understand a roadmap.

[email protected] GitHub ↗ LinkedIn ↗ Picton, Ontario
See the experiments ↓
Matt Hughes

Career so far

Started as a developer, spent most of the past two decades running product for streaming platforms, SAAS products and now build AI systems for clients at a boutique AI consultancy.

  1. 2022 — Present
    Senior Product ManagerArchitech, Toronto

    AI solutions for a portfolio of clients ranging from startups to leading telecom and media companies.

  2. 2021 — 2022
    Senior Product ManagerProposify, Halifax

    Grew a contract management product using qualitative and quantitative data — integrations, A/B testing, workflow expedition, user interviews.

  3. 2020 — 2021
    Career BreakProfessional Development

    Modernized technical skills with certificates in React, Angular, Node.js, C, Python, R, Data Science, and Statistics.

  4. 2017 — 2020
    Senior Digital Product ManagerSOCAN, Toronto

    Led design and development of an API tracking third-party application results, integrating traffic analytics into development decisions.

  5. 2014 — 2017
    Manager, Product DevelopmentShomi.com, Toronto

    Designed core analytics and recommendation engines for a nationwide video streaming service.

  6. 2010 — 2014
    Product ManagerCBC.ca, Toronto

    Built a nationwide video streaming service centred on usage analysis and advertising technology.

  7. 2008 — 2010
    Flash DeveloperCanwest, Toronto

    Wrote ActionScript to implement Omniture analytics support into a nationwide streaming platform.

The AI Lab

Four live experiments in agentic AI, built to keep my product instincts current with what these systems can actually do — LangGraph state machines, RAG memory, multi-agent debate, tool-calling economies. Each one is playable, not just described.

THE PHILOSOPHER'S BAR "Is our fate predetermined, or do we truly have agency?"
Experiment 01 · Multi-agent debate

The Philosopher's Bar

Put 2–4 historical minds in a room and see who breaks first.

A live debate engine: pick your thinkers and a topic, then choose the format — open Freeform, formal Oxford, or ratings-chasing Cable News — and watch the argument route itself, turn by turn, toward whoever the conversation has most activated.

Dynamic speaker selection Moderator steer breaks Consensus & tension detection Heat & concession tracking Live evidence injection Rolling context summarization

LangGraph·OpenAI GPT-4o / GPT-4o-mini·Tavily search

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AI DRIVEN HAUNTED MANSION The ghosts remember what you told the butler.
Experiment 02 · Memory & social simulation

AI Driven Haunted Mansion

The ghosts remember what you told the butler.

A text adventure where every NPC keeps an independent memory, mood, and fear level — and gossips about you to the rest of the house the moment you leave the room, so a bad first impression follows you from study to cellar.

RAG memory (Pinecone + HyDE) Per-NPC emotional state Gossip network propagation Agentic shopkeeper ReAct web search Token-streamed responses

LangGraph·GPT-4o-mini·Pinecone

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$? $? $? $? NOT JEOPARDY No question bank. The board writes itself.
Experiment 03 · Generative content & judging

Definitely Not an AI Rip-off of Jeopardy!

No question bank. The board writes itself.

Every category, clue, and answer is generated on demand — nothing pulled from a bank — then independently fact-checked before it ever reaches the board, and judged live against AI contestants with their own speed and accuracy quirks.

On-demand clue generation Independent fact-checking pass AI contestants with judging Host commentary + voice Full LLM tracing

GPT-4o·o4-mini·GPT-4o-mini·ElevenLabs TTS·LangSmith

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REPUBLIC OF VERIDIA POLITICAL SIMULATOR The country will not be improved by optimism.
Experiment 04 · Constrained simulation

Republic of Veridia

The economy doesn't care how confident your speech was.

A twelve-month political survival sim where deterministic game logic sets the hard bounds of truth and the LLM only narrates inside them, classifying faction reactions and generating flavour text — but never writing state directly. Four sub-stats drift on their own rules underneath every decision.

Engine-clamped LLM outputs Autonomous multi-stat economy Authored + AI-generated crises Scripted 26-beat campaign arc

LangGraph·OpenAI·FastAPI·React / Vite

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