Job Application Tracker

A Kanban board that tracks your job applications and auto-syncs them from Gmail — detecting the company, role, and status (applied / interview / offer / rejected) from your application emails. All email classification runs locally via Ollama, so your inbox content never leaves your machine.

Features

• Gmail auto-sync — scans the last 30 / 60 / 90 / 180 days for application-related emails and turns them into tracked applications, with a live streaming progress bar.
• Hybrid classification — a fast deterministic parser handles the common templates (LinkedIn, Indeed, Workday, Greenhouse, …); a local LLM handles everything else.
• Smart dedup & matching — the confirmation, interview, and rejection emails for the same job collapse into one application, even when the company name is spelled differently across emails. Different roles at the same company stay as separate applications.
• Sticky interview tracking — an application that reached an interview keeps that status for the "Interview Rate" stat even if it's later rejected.
• Two views — Kanban board (collapsible columns) and a sortable table.
• Provenance badges — each auto-detected card shows whether the ⚙️ parser or 🤖 AI classified it (cleared once you edit it), and newly-synced cards are highlighted after a sync.
• Unknown-role warnings — applications whose title couldn't be extracted are flagged for a quick manual fix.
• Manual entry & editing — add or edit applications by hand; manual edits are never overwritten by a later sync.

Tech stack

Layer	Stack
Client	React + Vite + Tailwind, axios
Server	Node + Express (TypeScript), Mongoose
Database	MongoDB
Auth / email	Google OAuth 2.0 + Gmail API (read-only)
Classification	Ollama running qwen2.5:7b (local)

Prerequisites

• Node.js (18+) and npm
• MongoDB running locally (or a connection string to a remote instance)
• Ollama installed and running, with the model pulled:

  ollama pull qwen2.5:7b

• A Google Cloud project with the Gmail API enabled and OAuth credentials (see Gmail integration)

Quick start

1. Configure environment

cp .env.example server/.env
# fill in the values (see the table below)

2. Install dependencies

cd server && npm install
cd ../client && npm install

3. Make sure MongoDB and Ollama are running

ollama serve            # if not already running as a service
ollama pull qwen2.5:7b  # one-time

4. Run the app (two terminals)

# Terminal 1 — backend
cd server && npm run dev

# Terminal 2 — frontend
cd client && npm run dev

Open http://localhost:5173, click Connect Gmail, then Sync.

Gmail integration

1. Create a Google Cloud project and enable the Gmail API.
2. Create OAuth 2.0 credentials (Web application).
3. Add the redirect URI: http://localhost:3001/api/auth/google/callback.
4. Add your Google account as a test user on the OAuth consent screen (the only scope used is gmail.readonly).
5. Put the Client ID + Secret in server/.env and click Connect Gmail in the app header.

Environment variables

Copy .env.example to server/.env and fill in:

Variable	Description
MONGODB_URI	MongoDB connection string (e.g. mongodb://localhost:27017/job-tracker)
PORT	Backend port (default 3001)
CLIENT_URL	Frontend origin (default http://localhost:5173)
GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID	From Google Cloud Console
GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET	From Google Cloud Console
GOOGLE_REDIRECT_URI	http://localhost:3001/api/auth/google/callback
SESSION_SECRET	Any long random string

Classification is fully local via Ollama — no API key is required. (Earlier versions used a hosted model; ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is no longer needed and can be removed from your .env.)

Notes

• The Gmail scope is read-only — the app never modifies or sends mail.
• Re-syncing is cheap: already-processed messages are skipped before any body is downloaded, so widening the scan window only backfills newly in-range emails.
• All data lives in your local MongoDB; there is no per-account separation — everything you sync (from any connected Gmail account) accumulates in one board and dedups together.