Job Finder

Finds jobs for any trade, in any country — from a sentence, or from your CV — and ranks them by your realistic chance of being shortlisted.

jobfinder daily --query "electrician jobs in Dubai"

You get a spreadsheet on your Desktop, best-first. It opens when the run finishes.

Everything runs on your machine. Your CV never leaves it except as text sent to Anthropic's API under your own key, and your search terms go to the job boards you have enabled — exactly as they would if you typed them into those sites.

Quick start

Four steps. Takes about five minutes.

1. Install

git clone https://github.com/MajidAli2006/jobfinder.git
cd jobfinder
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[all]"

2. Get one API key

Go to console.anthropic.com/settings/keys, sign in, click Create Key, and copy it. It starts with sk-ant-.

This is the only key the tool actually needs.

3. Put the key in a file called .env

cp .env.example .env

Open .env in any text editor and paste your key after the =, with no quotes and no spaces:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-your-key-here

Save it. .env is git-ignored, so your key is never committed.

4. Check it worked, then search

.venv/bin/jobfinder setup
.venv/bin/jobfinder daily --query "warehouse jobs in Leeds"

Tip: run source .venv/bin/activate once and you can drop the .venv/bin/ prefix for the rest of your terminal session.

Related MCP server: JobSpy MCP Server

Use it from Claude (MCP)

This tool is also an MCP server, so you can just ask Claude to search for you.

Claude Code — one command:

claude mcp add --scope user jobfinder -- /full/path/to/jobFinder/.venv/bin/jobfinder-mcp

Replace /full/path/to/jobFinder with wherever you cloned it. Run pwd inside the folder to get it.

Claude Desktop — open claude_desktop_config.json and add:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jobfinder": {
      "command": "/full/path/to/jobFinder/.venv/bin/jobfinder-mcp"
    }
  }
}

The config file lives at:

Restart Claude Desktop afterwards. Cursor and Windsurf use the same command format in their own MCP settings.

Then just ask:

"Find me remote React contract work in Europe"

Four tools are available: check_setup (confirm keys are working), preview_search (see how a request was understood, before spending anything), find_jobs (the full run — takes a few minutes and writes the spreadsheet), and list_platforms (which job sites serve a country).

API keys — what you need, and what you don't

With no keys at all, the tool still searches LinkedIn's public listings, employer career boards (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable, and others), ten remote job boards, Hacker News "Who is hiring", and any regional board that publishes standard job markup.

With the Anthropic key (step 2 above), it also understands free-text requests, reads your CV, and judges eligibility and fit. Without it you can still search, but you have to say what to look for in candidate.local.json rather than in a sentence — see Troubleshooting.

Everything below is optional. Each one adds more job sites. Skip any of them and the tool simply reports that source as unused — it never fails a run.

Free keys, self-service

Sign up, copy the key, paste it into .env.

Reaching Indeed, Glassdoor, Bayt, Naukri and the rest

Those sites — plus Rozee and foundit — block direct requests with a CAPTCHA, but all of them publish into Google's job index on purpose. So the way in is Google's index, and several vendors sell licensed access to it.

They all return the same listings, because it's all Google's data. The choice is price and free allowance, not coverage. Pick whichever you like and put its key in .env exactly like the others — the tool uses whichever one it finds:

Use the variable that matches where you signed up. The two are not interchangeable: a SearchApi.io key in SERPAPI_KEY is rejected with 401 Invalid API key. SerpApi keys are 64 hex characters; SearchApi.io's are shorter. If you get a rejection, check which site issued the key. Run jobfinder sources and it will tell you which vendor it is using.

SERPAPI_KEY=your-key-here

Set only one. If both are present the first configured vendor is used, and neither is required — without them the tool still runs, it simply skips those sites and says so in the run summary.

If your country's main job board isn't in the free list above, this is the key worth having: it reaches those sites in any country. Coverage does vary by country and by how you word the search — Google's index has plenty for "software engineer" in Pakistan and "full stack developer" in the UAE, and nothing at all for some other combinations. An empty result is reported as such, not as a broken key.

Approval needed

INDEED_PUBLISHER_ID, ZIPRECRUITER_API_KEY, SEEK_API_KEY, STEPSTONE_API_KEY, BAYT_API_KEY, NAUKRI_API_KEY, ROZEE_API_KEY — these are partner programmes that must approve you first. Most people don't need them; the SerpApi key reaches the same listings.

To see exactly which platforms serve your country and which keys they want:

jobfinder setup --region Nigeria

Where to put keys

Any of these, whichever suits you:

1. A file you name yourself, via JOBFINDER_ENV=/path/to/your.env

2. .env in the folder you run the command from

3. ~/.jobfinder/.env — a good choice if you want one set of keys for every project

4. .env in the project folder

All of them are read, and they combine. For a key set in more than one, the one higher up this list wins; a key only the lower file has is still picked up. So you can keep shared keys in ~/.jobfinder/.env and per-project ones in the project's .env.

Real environment variables beat every file, so export ADZUNA_APP_ID=... wins. Note the reverse does not hold: unsetting a variable in your shell does not hide a key that a .env file also defines. The format is one KEY=value per line, no quotes:

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
ADZUNA_APP_ID=12345678
ADZUNA_APP_KEY=abcdef...

Everyday use

Say what you want, in plain words. No filters to configure:

jobfinder daily --query "plumber jobs in Lagos"
jobfinder daily --query "remote React contract, Europe"
jobfinder daily --query "part time warehouse work near Leeds"
jobfinder daily --query "graduate marketing internship, London"

Or hand it your CV and let it work out what you do:

jobfinder daily --cv ~/cv.pdf
jobfinder daily --cv ~/cv.pdf --query "only remote, minimum £45k"

The CV is read on your machine. Only the text is sent to Anthropic, to build your search profile and score how well each advert fits.

Useful flags:

Every flag above works for any country. --region accepts a country, a city, a native name or a list — "uae", "Deutschland", "Lagos", "USA, UK" all resolve.

On --min-salary: an advert that publishes no salary is kept, flagged "Pay not published", because it cannot be shown to be below your floor. Add --require-salary if you would rather not see those at all. If your request itself names a figure — --query "electrician jobs, minimum $60k" — adverts with no published pay are moved to the Prospects sheet instead.

What you get

A spreadsheet in ~/Desktop/job finder/, with thirteen sheets: Quick Apply (just the essentials), Hot Leads, All Qualified Jobs, then splits by Full Time, Part Time, Contract, Freelance, Startups and Partnerships, plus Prospects (eligibility unclear — worth asking), Long Shots (qualified, but a low chance of a reply), Companies & Contacts, and a Search Summary showing what was filtered and why.

The same data is written alongside it as .csv, .json and a browsable .html page.

Match % is an estimate of being shortlisted, not keyword overlap. Your CV fit sets the ceiling; from there the estimate moves on what the advert reveals about the contest. Every row shows its own arithmetic in the "Why this rank" column:

fit 87 × 1.05 = 91 — applicant count not published (-4%) · posted in the
last 24 hours (+3%) · scoped to United Kingdom, smaller pool (+6%) ·
applying straight into the employer's own system (+5%)

So a perfect match behind 200 applicants ranks below a good match nobody has found yet — the honest answer about where your time goes.

Other commands

jobfinder setup                 # which keys are set, which are missing
jobfinder setup --region India  # what serves a particular country
jobfinder sources               # every connector and its status
jobfinder sources --test        # live-check every configured key
jobfinder status                # what previous runs found
jobfinder platforms --region Kenya
jobfinder platforms --region Kenya --trade "solar installer"
jobfinder check --title "..." --description "..."   # why one advert passed or failed

check also takes --company, --location and --url, which let it judge the employer, the eligibility and how you would apply rather than the wording alone.

To make one search your default so a bare jobfinder daily runs it, create candidate.local.json in the project folder:

{
  "home_country": "Nigeria",
  "default_search": {
    "label": "Electrical",
    "query": "electrician jobs in Lagos",
    "core_terms": ["electrician", "electrical"]
  }
}

It is git-ignored. Without it, a bare jobfinder daily asks what to look for rather than guessing.

Troubleshooting

"I do not know what kind of work to look for" — give it a --query or a --cv. It won't invent a search for you.

"A custom search needs the Claude judgement layer" — a free-text --query has to be read by the model before it can be searched, so this needs ANTHROPIC_API_KEY. The run stops with exit code 1 and writes no report. Either set the key, or state the search yourself in candidate.local.json as shown below.

No jobs found — widen the window with --days 30, check your country is spelled in full, and run jobfinder setup --region <your country> to see whether the sites that serve you need a key you haven't set.

"ANTHROPIC_API_KEY is not set" — the .env file isn't where the tool is looking, or the key has quotes around it. Run jobfinder setup to see what it found. Remember the file must be named .env, not env or .env.txt.

Nothing happens on Windows — install with pip install -e ".[all]" rather than running from source directly; Windows needs the bundled tzdata package.

Want to see it work before setting up any keys? A free-text --query needs the Anthropic key, because something has to read your sentence and turn it into a search. To run with no keys at all, hand it the search directly — put this in candidate.local.json in the project folder:

{
  "default_search": {
    "label": "Warehouse",
    "query": "warehouse operative",
    "core_terms": ["warehouse", "forklift"]
  }
}

then run it against the bundled sample adverts:

jobfinder daily --offline --no-llm

That writes a full spreadsheet without contacting anything.

Development

.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[all,dev]"
.venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/ -q      # 661 tests, fully offline
.venv/bin/ruff check job_agent/ tests/

The tests need no keys and no network access.

Privacy

Your CV file stays on your machine — it is read locally, and only the extracted text is sent to Anthropic's API, under your own key, to build your search profile and judge fit. Advert text goes to the same API for the same purpose, and nowhere else.

Your search terms are sent to whichever job boards you have enabled, because that is how searching them works — the same words you would type into those sites. With no keys set, that means LinkedIn's public search and the open job boards. Run jobfinder sources to see exactly which are active.

Nothing is sent to the author of this tool, and there is no telemetry. API keys are read from .env, which is git-ignored, and are scrubbed out of logs and error messages — a failed request that carries a key in its URL is redacted before it is printed.