job-search-mcp

An MCP server that retrieves resume/experience evidence relevant to a job description via RAG, and tracks fit-analysis results in a tracking store.

Analysis and tracking only — this project does not generate or tailor resumes. See docs/adr/0007-analysis-only-v1-no-resume-generation.md.

Design

The server is adapter-based rather than locked to any specific vendor. Three interfaces define the boundaries:

• VectorStore (src/job_search_mcp/vector_store/) — embedded resume/experience chunk storage and similarity search. Default implementation: QdrantVectorStore (Cloud or self-hosted-in-Docker — a connection detail, not an interface difference).

• TrackingStore (src/job_search_mcp/tracking_store/) — persistence for fit-analysis results. NotionTrackingStore is the store the server wires up today (see Setup). SQLiteTrackingStore is a zero-dependency local implementation that also exists but isn't yet selectable via config — see Roadmap. Both read a user-declared tracking_schema.yaml (docs/adr/0011-configurable-tracking-field-schema.md) for which fields to write and read, rather than a mapping hardcoded to one specific Notion database.

• ResumeSource (src/job_search_mcp/resume_source/) — retrieval of resume/experience content. Implementation: FileResumeSource (local text/markdown, PDF, and DOCX parsing).

Rationale for each of these decisions is recorded in docs/adr/.

Embeddings (src/job_search_mcp/embeddings/) default to a local SentenceTransformersEmbedder (all-MiniLM-L6-v2) — see docs/adr/0006-embeddings-choice-open.md.

Related MCP server: Job Application MCP

Stack

• Python, dependency management via uv

• just as the task runner (see justfile)

• Qdrant (vector store), Notion (tracking store)

• MCP Python SDK for the server itself

MCP tools

• match_job(job_description, source_url=None) — embeds the job description, retrieves the most relevant resume/experience chunks from the configured VectorStore, and returns a heuristic retrieval_score (top-match cosine similarity) plus the retrieved evidence. Named retrieval_score, not fit_score — it's a retrieval confidence signal, not a fit judgment, and the two can diverge (see docs/adr/0008-resume-chunking-strategy.md). It does not synthesize a fit verdict itself — no internal LLM call — so the calling assistant is expected to reason over the returned evidence, applying the job-fit://rubric resource returned alongside it. Since job_description is often scraped/pasted web text, the result also includes it wrapped in an explicit data delimiter with a do-not-follow-instructions notice (docs/adr/0017-delimit-job-description-in-match-job-result.md).

  Note: docs/adr/0009-caller-agnostic-reversal.md calls for this judgment step to move server-side into a new evaluate_fit tool, so fit-bucket assignment isn't left to whichever assistant happens to call match_job. That tool is designed (docs/evaluate_fit_schema.md, docs/adr/0010-layer-split-design-evaluate-fit.md) but not yet implemented — today, the calling assistant still constructs the FitVerdict passed to push_to_tracker itself.

• push_to_tracker(job_id, verdict, dry_run=False) — writes a FitVerdict (see docs/evaluate_fit_schema.md) to the configured TrackingStore. Updates an existing tracked row by Notion page ID — never creates a new row or searches for one. Only the fields your tracking_schema.yaml marks tool-populated are touched; every manual field on the row (company, comp range, source, work arrangement, etc.) is left as-is (docs/adr/0011-configurable-tracking-field-schema.md). A misconfigured field (e.g. a notion.property that no longer exists on your database) is skipped with a warning rather than failing the whole write — check the result's warnings. dry_run=True returns the mapped properties payload without writing.

• find_or_create_application(company, role, source_url=None, dry_run=False) — finds an existing tracked row by exact company+role text match, or creates a new one if none exists. Requires company and role fields with a notion.property declared in tracking_schema.yaml. Returns {"job_id": ..., "created": bool}. See docs/adr/0013-find-or-create-application.md.

• update_status(job_id, status, dry_run=False) — sets the Status field on an existing tracked row directly, for candidate-reported lifecycle events (Applied, Rejected, Interviewing, Offer, ...). Decoupled from FitVerdict/push_to_tracker entirely — see docs/adr/0014-update-status-tool.md.

push_to_tracker and update_status both verify the target job_id actually belongs to your configured Notion database before writing to it — see docs/adr/0016-job-id-ownership-check.md.

• list_applications(status=None) — lists tracked jobs from the configured TrackingStore, each with job_id plus whatever tool-populated fields your schema declares (typically status, fit_rating, notes). Pass status to filter to an exact (case-sensitive) match, e.g. "Not yet applied" — useful for questions like "what am I waiting to hear back on" without opening Notion.

Resume text is split into light, section/role-sized chunks before embedding (src/job_search_mcp/chunking.py) rather than embedded whole — see docs/adr/0008-resume-chunking-strategy.md.

Tracking field schema

push_to_tracker and list_applications don't hardcode a field list — they read tracking_schema.yaml (path overridable via TRACKING_SCHEMA_PATH, gitignored like .env; copy tracking_schema.example.yaml to get started). Each field is declared as either:

• manual: true — the tool never reads or writes it (company, comp range, source, work arrangement, ...). Documentation only.

• derived_from: <status_fixed | fit_rating_from_bucket | key_notes> — a tool-populated field, computed from a FitVerdict. These three are the only values a FitVerdict can currently be turned into; the schema says which of them your tracker wants and under what property/column name, not how to compute them.

A tool-populated field also needs a backend location: notion.property/notion.type for Notion, sqlite.column for SQLiteTrackingStore (which only tracks fields that declare a sqlite.column at all — it has no concept of Notion's manual fields).

Someone with a simpler tracker than the author's just lists fewer fields. A misconfigured individual field (an unrecognized derived_from, or a notion.property that doesn't exist on the live database) is warned about and skipped rather than failing the whole write; only an unreadable or structurally invalid schema file itself is a hard failure. See docs/adr/0011-configurable-tracking-field-schema.md for the full design.

Setup

1. just install

2. Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your Qdrant and Notion connection details.

3. Copy tracking_schema.example.yaml to tracking_schema.yaml and edit the field list to match your own tracker (see Tracking field schema, above).

4. Ingest a resume: uv run python -m job_search_mcp.ingest path/to/resume.pdf

5. Register with Claude Code (project-scoped):

   claude mcp add job-search-mcp -- uv run --directory "$(pwd)" job-search-mcp

6. In a Claude Code session in this project, ask it to call match_job with a real job description, then push_to_tracker against a row you already track in Notion.

Roadmap

Shipped: match_job (retrieval), push_to_tracker, list_applications, find_or_create_application, and update_status against NotionTrackingStore, the YAML-configurable tracking field schema (docs/adr/0011-configurable-tracking-field-schema.md), and the ingestion pipeline (ResumeSource → chunking → embedding → VectorStore).

Planned next:

• evaluate_fit — move fit-bucket judgment (the rubric in docs/job_fit_scoring_algorithm.md) inside the server via an internal LLM call, so it no longer depends on the calling assistant applying the rubric itself (docs/adr/0009-caller-agnostic-reversal.md, docs/adr/0010-layer-split-design-evaluate-fit.md)

• Wire SQLiteTrackingStore up as a selectable backend (it exists, reads the same tracking schema, and is tested, but the server currently always constructs NotionTrackingStore)

• Google Drive-backed ResumeSource implementation

• Revisit the embeddings choice if local sentence-transformers quality proves insufficient (docs/adr/0006-embeddings-choice-open.md)

Deferred, low priority (no design commitment beyond the note below):

• Bulk re-evaluation when candidate_profile.yaml changes — target_floor/title_mapping_note are documented as editable-but-stable, so a value changing after postings are already tracked is a foreseeable case. Open question: whether list_applications + re-running evaluate_fit is sufficient once that tool exists, or whether the original job_description text needs to be persisted somewhere (it currently isn't) to make re-evaluation possible later.

• Duplicate/near-duplicate JD detection — companies commonly post near-identical reqs for genuinely different underlying roles (same title, similar boilerplate, different team/contract). Neither match_job/evaluate_fit nor find_or_create_application (docs/adr/0013-find-or-create-application.md, which only matches exact company+role text) currently detect this. Direction: a lightweight hash/fuzzy-match check against previously-ingested postings, surfaced as a warning rather than blocking.

Both items above were raised alongside specific anecdotes (a mid-search target_floor change; two near-duplicate "Skylight" postings) that a transcript-search check found no independent record of — see docs/adr/0015-prompt-injection-defense-for-job-description-text.md's Verification section for the same check applied to a related claim from the same source. Both items stand on the general reasoning above regardless of that.

Development

just install   # uv sync
just test      # uv run pytest (unit tests only; integration needs QDRANT_URL)
just lint      # uv run ruff check .
just run       # uv run job-search-mcp (stdio MCP server)

CI (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs lint and the unit test suite on every push to main and every pull request.