LOCAL-FIRST APPLICATION OPERATIONS

Run a precise
application system.

Designed and engineered by William Elias, Career Agent Core is a local-first Go system for discovery, tailored documents, guarded browser work, and clear human handoffs. Built to make the work observable—not magical.

System modules

Purpose-built components for repeatable, local, and reviewable application work.

Layered form recovery

Recovers stale selectors through accessible labels and, when configured, a screenshot-assisted visual fallback for hard-to-map forms.

Inbox outcome tracker

Tracks rejection and interview messages through IMAP, recording each outcome and message acknowledgement in one local SQLite transaction.

Go-native runtime

A CGO-free Go runtime using modernc.org/sqlite, bounded worker pools, parallel discovery, and local-first model routing.

Local operations console

A loopback-only operations console with live funnel metrics, queue state, and guarded same-origin start and stop controls.

Bounded queue cycles

Run with --daemon to refresh discovery and process a capped batch every six hours, with clean interruption between cycles.

Human-controlled handoffs

Does every expensive step — scoring, tailoring, and proving the form is live and fillable — then stops before the final click. Vetted roles land in a review queue with their tailored documents, ready for human review when automation cannot proceed safely or reliably.

Local-first model routing

Uses Ollama by default, with optional Claude or Gemini providers. Documents generate in-process unless an optional, health-checked FastAPI offload is configured.

Engineering principles

Bounded automation, explicit outcomes, and layered safeguards.

  • Self-healing form mappings Invalidates stale Playwright selectors and falls back through labels and visual recovery before giving up.
  • Bounded ATS learning Maps unknown application layouts through the configured model, then caches the local blueprint for later runs.
  • Resolver-bound networking Validates public IP targets and binds outbound traffic to the resolved address to resist DNS rebinding.
  • Prompt-injection quarantine Checks posting text and browser DOM before any model call, with local auditing and a conservative ATS boilerplate allowlist.
  • Human-controlled handoffs Can stop before submission, preserve tailored documents, and queue the exact next step for a human reviewer.
  • Stateful application flow Processes multi-step forms through explicit states, preserving clear failure reasons and resumable handoffs.
  • Bounded concurrent pipeline Uses worker limits, parallel I/O, and SQLite WAL storage to keep discovery and inference observable under load.

Technical Q&A

Core architectural decisions behind local-first autonomous application engineering.

Why build an autonomous application operations system in local-first Go?

Web scraping and agentic workflows typically rely on heavy Python runtimes with brittle dependencies. Building in Go provides single-binary deployment, zero-runtime overhead, deterministic goroutine concurrency with bounded worker pools, and memory safety without garbage collection stalls during long-running browser automation runs.

How does prompt-injection quarantine prevent adversarial ATS exploits?

Untrusted third-party job postings frequently contain hidden zero-width text, prompt override instructions, or adversarial HTML markup designed to trick generative models into unauthorized actions. Career Agent Core routes all incoming job descriptions and DOM text through an isolated sanitizer and AST boilerplate filter before model reasoning occurs.

Why are human-controlled handoffs superior to unconstrained automated submissions?

Fully unconstrained application bots degrade candidate reputation by sending misaligned or low-quality documents. Career Agent Core prepares tailored resumes and pre-fills multi-step forms up to the final confirmation gate, pausing execution and surfacing an exact diff for human review before any destructive submission event occurs.

How does resolver-bound networking prevent DNS rebinding attacks?

Browser-controlling agents that follow arbitrary external links risk being redirected to internal private networks (localhost, 127.0.0.1, or cloud metadata endpoints). Career Agent Core implements resolver-bound dialers that explicitly validate target IP addresses against private CIDR ranges prior to socket connection.