Career Compass · a Claude pluginv2.15.1

Paste a job posting. Get an honest fit verdict.

Paste a job posting and your resume to see how well you really fit. Then tailor your résumé, write the cover letter, and prep the interview without padding your history.

free · MIT · no account
works in claude.ai chat, Cowork, Claude Code
your files stay on your computer
Example on sample data  Alex Rivera is fictional and ships with the package · the posting is made up · shortened: the full reply adds talking points, red flags and questions to ask
A drafted résumé bullet

Cut patient onboarding from 47 days to 11 after the acquisition of 3 regional health systems, leading a team of [confirm: team size] and eliminating $2.1M in compliance penalties over 18 months.

Example on sample data  The record says what changed, not how many people did it, so the draft asks instead of guessing.

Every sentence it writes about you comes from your history or from what you told it. When a stronger draft needs a fact it doesn't have, the gap stays visible in the draft. You fill it in or cut it.

Get it in the Claude directory

Two clicks, no setup

  1. In the Claude app or on claude.ai, open Customize → Plugins.
  2. Search for Career Compass and add it.
  3. Open a new chat, paste your résumé and a job posting, and ask Do I fit this? No posting at hand? Ask for a sample Career Compass fit check on a made-up profile first.
claude.ai chat · web, desktop, mobileSkills only. Claude does the fit check, tailoring, interview prep or offer review from what you paste. A Career Compass card you keep carries your search into the next chat.
Cowork and Claude CodeSkills plus a small local server: your career history and every application are kept as plain text on your computer, so later answers start from them. Needs Node.js 22 or newer.

Commands, in Claude Code and Cowork. In claude.ai chat, just ask in plain words.

/career-compass:start :fit-check :interview-prep :today :debrief :week :sweep :find :feedback :answer

Saves end with a receipt of what changed. You can record an offer and how each interview round went, and :today leads with a debrief the day after an interview.

Panel one

How it works, in five steps

01

You talk to Claude. Claude uses the tools. In Cowork and Claude Code, the tools read and write a folder of plain text files on your own computer.

Illustration: a desk with a brass compass, a wooden index-card box holding cream cards, a lamp, a laptop showing a five-column kanban board with clay-orange and sage cards, and a single typed page — connected by a dotted pencil path from the card box to the laptop to the page.
Plate I The whole loop on one desk: the facts (the card box) → the pipeline (the board) → the thing you send (the page).

  1. Install

    Add Career Compass from the Claude directory (above). In claude.ai chat it helps with what you paste; in Cowork and Claude Code it also remembers. Other MCP apps: see below.

  2. Tell it who you are

    Paste your résumé, performance reviews, award emails. Claude pulls out the facts and asks for the numbers you left vague. You confirm each section before it is written, and each save tells you what changed.

    ingest_document save_career_section

  3. Find and assess a role

    Paste a posting. You get a verdict, strong fit, stretch, or long shot, checked against your whole preference contract (salary band, remote, relocation, notice period), never a flattering one.

    explore_opportunity research_company

  4. Apply and track

    A résumé tailored to that posting, a cover letter, a version formatted for the applicant tracking system, and one card on a pipeline that moves from discovered to offer.

    tailor_resume generate_cover_letter format_for_ats answer_application pipeline_*

  5. Interview, decide, learn

    Prep per round, a mid-process map of what has been covered, an offer broken down against your targets, and a journal of what each step taught you.

    prepare_interview interview_arc evaluate_offer capture_insight
Your first sentence Here's a job posting and my résumé. How well do I fit? — you get the answer first, then Claude offers to save your résumé so the next one starts from it.
Panel two · zoom

Facts about you vs. the résumé you send

02

A résumé is not where your career lives. It is a print. The facts live in the Career KB, and every résumé is a fresh print of those facts against one posting.

Illustration, split in two: on the left an open wooden card-catalog drawer full of index cards with small clay-orange badges; on the right a hand letterpress with one crisp typed page coming off the plate and a fan of five slightly different pages behind it, each with a different colored tab. A sage ribbon flows from the drawer into the press.
Plate II One drawer of facts, many prints. The drawer is edited; the prints are generated.
The Career KB · the source

Facts about you

  • shape Structured, not prose. Each achievement is a metric, the context it happened in, and the impact it had.
  • sections profile · experience · skills · education · projects · testimonials — plus a dated journal of signals.
  • writes save_career_section writes one section at a time, validated first, previous version kept as a .bak. A save that would drop entries is refused unless you mean it. Your client asks you to confirm.
  • grows Every posting explored, interview debriefed, and offer weighed can add a dated signal back. It can also read a project's git history and report what you measurably did there, so the numbers come from the record, not from memory.
achievements:
  - metric: cut onboarding from 6 weeks to 9 days
    context: 40-person support org, no runbooks
    impact: freed two leads for the Q3 launch
# one fact. it will outlive every résumé it appears in.
tailor_resume · a rendering

The résumé you send

  • input The KB and one posting. Nothing else.
  • output The résumé text in the format you chose — standard, federal, academic, or functional — plus a Keyword Match Report naming which of the posting's terms it covered and which it could not, honestly.
  • writes Nothing. A résumé is disposable; the facts are not. Edit a print and the drawer does not change. Add a fact to the drawer and every future print improves.
  • then generate_cover_letter for the story, format_for_ats to lay it out for the form you paste it into.

The habit this builds: when something goes well at work, add the fact — not "update my résumé." The résumé is an output.

Panel three · zoom

Interview prep — how we help you ask

03

An interview is two lists of questions. Career Compass prepares both: the ones they will ask you, answered from your own facts — and the ones you should ask them, which is where most candidates go quiet.

Illustration: two empty wooden chairs face each other across a small round table in lamplight. On the table an open notebook — one page a column of question-mark shapes pointing toward the far chair, the other a short stack of story cards with small stars — and a cup of tea. A compass rose is embossed on the notebook cover.
Plate III Two chairs, one notebook, both pages filled before you sit down.
What prepare_interview hands you, per round

  1. Opening pitch, 60–90 seconds

    "Tell me about yourself," bridged to this role and this company — not your life story.

  2. Three to five STAR stories from your facts

    Situation, Task, Action — clear about your own part, without erasing the team — and a Result with the number, written out in full. A missing detail is marked [confirm: …], not invented. The themes shift by round: phone screen, behavioral, technical, panel, final.

  3. 8–12 likely questions

    Specific to the company and role, each with an answer angle from your own background.

  4. 5–7 questions to ask them

    Thoughtful, not generic — built from the company research and the posting's own gaps. This is the half that is usually improvised in the room. Here it is prepared before you walk in.

  5. Company and role alignment

    How your background connects to their mission, product, and current problems.

  6. Bridge topics

    The surprising connections between your experience and their world.

  7. Watch-outs and reframes

    The concerns they are likely to raise about your background, each with an honest answer ready — so when the question comes, you are not improvising. Prepared, not volunteered.

Between rounds

Tips the tools are built around

  • Ask about the gap, not the perk. The posting always leaves something unsaid — the team's size, who owns the roadmap, why the seat is open. The fit check and the company brief surface those gaps, and they become your first questions.
  • Don't repeat ground already covered. Between rounds, ask for the map of the process so far: what each round surfaced, the open threads, the untested gaps, and the questions the next round is most likely to ask.
  • Debrief while it's fresh. Right after an interview, tell Claude what the room told you. The durable part goes into your journal, and your next prep starts from it instead of from zero.
  • Say the number, then the context. Every STAR story is drawn from an achievement that already has a metric. If a story has no number, that is a fact to go find — not a sentence to pad.
  • "Not set" is not "no." If you never told it your salary band or relocation stance, the fit check says so and asks — it will not quietly assume an answer and rule a role out on it.
Who does whatClaude does the reasoning and the writing. The tools supply your facts and the structure. Neither invents a preference you did not state.
Where your data isIn Cowork and Claude Code, simple text files in a folder on your own computer, readable in any editor. No account, no cloud sync, no tracking. Privacy policy.
What "honest" means hereThe verdict is a judgement, not encouragement: a role that matches on skills but misses your salary floor is a stretch at best, and it says why. The Keyword Match Report shows what a résumé did not cover.
Panel four · for developers

Turn your git history into honest résumé evidence

04

If you write code, you already have a record of what you did. In Cowork or Claude Code, ask: “Look at my project in ~/code/billing-service and tell me what I can honestly claim on my résumé.”

harvest_evidence · what it reports
## What is measurably true - Committed to billing-service across 14 distinct months, 2024-11 to 2025-12. how: git log --no-merges --author=<you> … - 212 of 530 non-merge commits in this window are yours (40%). how: git rev-list --count --no-merges, with and without --author. Participation, NOT size. ## What this cannot tell you - Did any of this ship to real users, and did anything measurable change when it did?

Example on made-up numbers

After you answer its questions

Built the invoicing service in billing-service over 14 months (212 commits), which [confirm: what changed for users once it shipped, and by how much?]

It reads that project's history on your computer, counts only your own commits, shows the command behind every number, and writes nothing. Counts are participation, not impact, so it asks what the log can't know before anything becomes a bullet.

Panel five · optional

A morning briefing, on your own computer

05

Career Compass never runs on a timer. If you want today's list waiting for you, you set it up yourself, and it only reads.

  1. Use a local task

    In the Claude Code desktop app, create a local scheduled task (how). It runs on your computer, so it can reach your data folder.

  2. Give it plain text

    Paste the prompt below. Not /career-compass:today: scheduled runs don't start commands that only run when you type them.

  3. It only reads

    pipeline_view reads your pipeline and changes nothing. You get one “Start here” move and the rest of today in eight lines.

  4. Check before relying on it

    Cowork's scheduled tasks may run remotely, where your local data folder isn't available, so try one by hand first. Cloud routines and /loop don't fit.

Call pipeline_view with action next_actions. Lead with the Start here item in eight lines or fewer, and change nothing. If it's after 2pm, say it's a catch-up run.
Who it's for

Start from where you are

→
Laid offGet back out quickly without overstating or apologizing for the gap. Switching careersSee which of your experience really carries over, in the new field's words. New gradsMake coursework, projects and internships count, without inflating them.

Did a fit check get something wrong? Tell me in a short form (leave out anything personal). There is no telemetry, so that is the only way I find out.

For other MCP clients · and the dashboard

Running the server yourself.

If you installed the plugin, you can stop here. The same server runs in Claude Desktop, Cursor, and any app that speaks MCP. One command finds each app and wires it, backing up any file it touches.

Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code without the plugin npx -y career-compass-mcp install Needs Node.js 22 or newer. If the plugin is already installed, it leaves Claude Code alone so you don't get two copies of every tool. The package has 19 tools · 4 prompts · 9 resources · 1 dashboard; the README has every route.
Illustration: a wooden window frame in a cream wall looks onto the same card-catalog drawer of index cards. Taped inside the glass, a freshly printed sheet shows a five-column board of small clay and sage cards, a short dotted list, and a row of horizontal bars — a live view drawn on the pane.
Plate IV The lite dashboard: a sheet on the glass, reprinted from the drawer each time you look.
The dashboard

The dashboard looks. Claude does.

06

A read-only view of the same files Claude reads and writes, redrawn every time you open it. Anything you want changed, you say to Claude — and the dashboard either hands you the words, or, with Claude Code installed, asks for you.

  1. Open it

    One command starts a tiny web server on your own computer and opens your browser. It only answers the computer you are sitting at; nothing on your network, and no other website, can reach the page.

  2. It reads the drawer

    On every request the page re-reads the pipeline file from disk and renders the whole document fresh. Nothing is cached, nothing is remembered between loads. Refresh the browser and you are looking at the files as they are right now.

  3. You look

    Six numbers across the top, a kanban by stage with the closed applications folded away, a next-actions list of what is overdue or due soon, and a stage chart. Click a card and its drawer opens: days in stage, follow-up, posting, contacts, rounds, latest note.

  4. You ask Claude, not the page

    Every button, card drawer, and next-action row carries a ready-made question. By default it copies the words for you to paste. Start the dashboard with --ask-claude and, if Claude Code is installed, the click asks Claude directly, read-only unless you also pass --ask-claude-writes. That runs under your own Claude account and billing, and sends what it reads to Anthropic like any Claude Code session.

Try it with nobody's data npx -y career-compass-mcp dashboard --sample Opens the bundled Alex Rivera demo. Its dates shift to sit around today, and the tools refuse to write into it.
Screenshot of the lite dashboard in light mode: six KPI cards, a five-column pipeline board with one card's detail drawer, a next-actions panel, and a stage-distribution bar chart, on the sample data.
screenshotNot an illustration · the bundled sample search · captured from a published build