Job Search

How it works

The mechanics of this kit, plainly — what runs and when, where the data lands, and what you look at.

• Search sweep runs daily · 7am and keeps the Applications dashboard fresh. Every morning — reads what recruiters and companies sent, moves each application from the evidence, puts interviews on the board.
• What is captured lands in the Application pipeline record, which lives at Data/Application Pipeline in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• What is captured lands in the Interview log record, which lives at Data/Interview Log in your vault — yours to open, search, and edit like any other file.
• The Applications dashboard reads from the record and shows, at a glance: where each one stands · the pipeline, by stage · applications tracked · waiting on them · interviews · interviews ahead · applications sent, month by month · offers on the table · the pipeline · the interview log · how this board works.

The wiring, in one breath: Application capture writes to Application pipeline · Search sweep writes to Application pipeline · Application capture writes to Interview log · Interview brief writes to Interview log · Application pipeline shown by Applications · Interview log shown by Applications · Applications kept fresh by Search sweep · Search sweep run by Kestrel · Kestrel holds Application capture · Kestrel holds Interview brief.

Getting the most from it

A kit earns its place when it changes what you look at and what you say, not when it is installed. This is the rhythm that makes it pay.

• Read Where each one stands after the morning Search sweep, not in the evening: the sweep has been through what recruiters and companies sent overnight, so the stage on the table is the stage as of today. Waiting on them beside it is the honest signal — a wait past a fortnight turns amber, and it is drawn from the register, so nothing nobody stated is on it.
• Say what happened the way you'd tell a friend — "applied to Northwind for the project role", "Aurora want a screening call", "Contoso turned me down" — and Application capture moves the pipeline. With several in flight, name which; if you don't, Kestrel asks rather than guessing.
• Ask for a brief the day before, not the hour before: "brief me for Northwind" and Interview brief writes one page into your Job Search folder — the application so far, the company from what is publicly written right now with its sources, the people, the questions this round tends to ask and the ones worth asking. Put your CV and any notes on the role in that folder first; what you have written outranks anything found on the web.
• Let the sweep move stages and keep your own hand for what it cannot see: an application made by phone or through a friend, a conversation at an event, a reply that came by text. Those are a sentence each to Kestrel, and the board is complete again.
• Read The pipeline, by stage once a week, not once a day: it answers whether the search is moving — how much is still at Applied, how much has reached an interview — and the monthly line beside it whether you are still sending applications at the pace you meant to.
• When one closes, say so — "I've accepted Fabrikam", "I'm withdrawing from Lakeside" — and it drops off the table keeping its history. When the search is over, pause the Search sweep from its screen; the register stays, ready for the next one.

Make it yours

Nothing here is fixed. The pieces are ordinary agents, routines, records and dashboards, so anything you know about shaping those applies. Retire whatever earns nothing.

Things people usually change first

Say any of these in chat, or edit them on the kit’s page in the app.

• What you call each application — the name on the register is the word Kestrel uses back.
• When the Search sweep runs, or pausing it between searches and keeping the register by hand.
• How far back the first sweep looks, if three months is not the shape of your hunt.
• Where Kestrel keeps what you tell it: reads the shared picture and writes privately by default, chosen at install and changeable on the agent's screen.

Your first run

Installing starts a short setup conversation — not a form. Answer roughly, correct later.

1. Installing ends at the first sweep's own screen, where the email and calendar grants are asked for — that is the whole pitch, so the ask sits in front, where it makes sense. Start it and Kestrel reads back through three months of your email: every application you made and every reply, invite, rejection and offer that followed, plus the interviews on your calendar. The pipeline is rebuilt from history — each application at the stage the evidence puts it, who you are waiting on, the interviews ahead — and you watch the board fill. It is a real run and uses credits like any other.
2. When that first sweep finishes, Kestrel leaves one card with what it found — how many applications, at how many companies — and an invitation to spend two minutes together fixing anything it misread: a stage it got wrong, an application it missed, one that isn't really live any more. That is also where you tell Kestrel what you are looking for — the roles, the floor, where you will work, and whether the search is confidential — which lands in preferences, never on a row.
3. Skip the sweep and the pipeline still works by hand: Kestrel takes what is in flight one application at a time — company, role, stage, roughly when you applied and what happens next — and nothing in that conversation touches your email. The Search sweep waits on your Routines screen until you choose to run it.
4. After that the sweep runs every morning at seven, scans only what is new since the last one, moves a stage only where a message says so, puts each interview on the log with its date, and says something only when it filed an invite, a rejection or an offer, when an interview is within two days without a brief, when an offer deadline is within a week, or when an email could not be matched to an application.

Watch the first pass, then tell it what you would have done differently — that correction teaches it more than any setup could.

The essentials

Learning, preferences and run costs work the same in every kit — so they are covered once, in the Kits guide.

Living with a Kit — the Kits guide →

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