Job-Application Tracker

Why I built it

I was looking for work and keeping my pipeline in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are terrible at reminders, status transitions, and "when did I last hear back from this company?". So I built the tool I wanted — which is also the most defensible kind of side project: one I genuinely use (dogfooding).

What it does

• Tracks applications across companies, with role, source, and salary notes.
• Models status as an explicit state machine: applied → screening → interview → offer | rejected.
• Logs follow-ups and surfaces the ones that are overdue.
• Keeps a contacts list (recruiters, hiring managers) linked to applications.
• Shows simple funnel stats so I can see where I'm losing candidates.

Architecture decisions

• Fastify over Express — schema-based validation out of the box and a tighter typed surface, which matters when the whole point is correctness.
• Prisma for data access — typed queries and migrations without hand-rolling SQL.
• Status as a state machine, not a free-text field — illegal transitions are rejected at the boundary, so the funnel stats are trustworthy.
• JWT auth with refresh — single-user today, but structured so multi-tenant isn't a rewrite.

Status

Core flows are working and covered by Vitest tests, with CI green. The UI is intentionally out of scope for now — the value is the API and the data model.