Your job hunt, run by a rat.

CareerRat rates the postings actually worth chasing, applies with honest artifacts drawn from your own evidence, and tracks every outcome. It runs on the AI CLI you already have — Claude Code, Codex, or anything else on your PATH.

npm i -g careerrat
Works with Claude Code · Codex · Gemini · any text-in, text-out command

Three steps, no forms up front.

Rate what's worth chasing, apply with real evidence, track what happens next. That's the whole loop — R, A, T.

01

Point it at your CLI

On first launch it finds the AI CLIs already installed. Pick one — your subscription, your machine, nothing leaves it.

CLAUDE CODE · DETECTED · V2.3
02

Talk to it

Drop your résumé and answer a short interview. CareerRat fills its own file as you talk — roles, floors, dealbreakers — and you can edit any of it by hand.

ROLES ✓ · GUARDRAILS ✓ · TARGETING.YML UPDATED
03

It hunts, you decide

Sweeps run in the background: pull, dedupe, cut, rank, prep. Everything it does leaves a receipt, and nothing is sent without you.

SWEEP 6:12 AM · 9 CUT · 12 RANKED · AI · CLAUDE CODE

That's the point.

Honest tailoring isn't a limitation — it's a design choice. Applications that overclaim don't hold up in interviews. Artifacts built from your real evidence do.

Evidence bank, not a word bank

You build a bank of real things you did — projects, metrics, decisions. Every tailored artifact draws only from that bank.

Refuses to invent facts

If a claim isn't in your evidence, it won't write it. No hallucinated roles. No inflated titles. No fake metrics.

Tailored, not fabricated

It reorders, reframes, and emphasises what genuinely fits the role. That's tailoring. That's honest.

Rate before you apply

Every posting gets rated against your constraints before tailoring starts. You never write a cover letter for a job that doesn't fit.

Your stuff stays yours.

Run CareerRat on your own machine and your résumé, comp numbers, evidence bank, and full pipeline stay on your laptop. No account to create, no telemetry, nothing syncing in the background.

runs locallyno accountno telemetryzero runtime depsfree

Self-host it, and your data stays your own.

Job searches are personal. Your comp floor, your reasons for leaving, your backup options — run CareerRat yourself and all of it stays on your machine, full stop.

No signup, no telemetry, nothing phoned home. The self-host version runs on your machine and uses the AI CLI you already have. What you put in stays in.

Works with your favorite AI.

CareerRat is an agent runtime. It doesn't lock you into a model or a subscription. Bring whatever AI CLI you already use — Claude Code, Codex, or anything else on your PATH.

CLI launch options
Claude CodeOpenAI Codexany CLI on PATH
~ careerrat $
careerrat start claude
# scaffold → skills → dashboard → agent handoff
# one command, then the agent takes it from here

CareerRat scaffolds the workspace, installs skills, starts the dashboard, and hands off to a supported agent CLI. Model choice, cost, and local data stay under local control.

Free is the product.

With your own CLI you get all of it — the AI features included. No account, no sign-in, no trial clock.

Free

$0 · bring your CLI

The whole app. AI features run on your installed CLI — your subscription, your machine.

  • Board pulls, dedupe, tracking
  • Fit scores + guardrail cuts
  • Interview prep + tailored drafts
  • Calendar, network, library
  • Local files you own — plain YAML
Get started free

Hosted AI

Coming soon

No CLI, no setup — we run the model. Same app, same receipts.

  • Everything in Free
  • No CLI required — sign in and go
  • Pricing announced at launch
Join the waitlist

The whole loop, end to end.

It all ships together, and none of it is built for one industry. A nurse, an engineer, and a driver each answer onboarding their own way and get the same loop.

A note from the maker:I built this to solve my own job search — the spray-and-pray cycle felt disrespectful of everyone's time, including mine. CareerRat is what I wanted: something that rates first, applies honestly, and keeps my data to itself.
  • Asks what you want, once — a guided onboarding
  • Finds and rates real jobs from the boards you choose
  • Reads the whole posting before it writes a word
  • Measures every role against your actual constraints
  • Writes honest résumés and cover letters from your evidence
  • Drafts and tracks recruiter messages and follow-ups
  • Researches companies and checks what the job should pay
  • Builds interview story banks and preps you for live calls
  • Coaches you through the comp conversation, out loud
  • Remembers every outcome and gets sharper as you go
  • A live dashboard — the agent works, you watch it happen
  • Works the same for any role, in any field

Install it. Run it. Own it.

Free to self-host, open source (MIT). No wizard, no signup — one command and the agent takes it from there.

Prerequisites
Get it running
~ $
npm install -g careerrat
careerrat start claude
# or: careerrat start codex
# scaffolds workspace, installs skills, opens the dashboard at localhost:7777
# then hands off to the agent

Paste a job posting and say “evaluate this” to kick off the loop. Or try the bundled sample under examples/sample-jobs/.

Update later
~ careerrat $
careerrat update
# fetches the latest published code, your data stays untouched

Ready when you are.

Free. Local. Honest. One command to get going. Run it yourself and your data stays put.