fix(web-research): stop treating a WebFetch 403 as a dead posting (#277)

* fix(web-research): stop treating a WebFetch 403 as a dead posting

WebFetch sends a bot user agent, and many bank and corporate sites answer
with HTTP 403 while serving the same page to a browser normally. Every
command treated that as "page unavailable" and degraded silently rather
than failing loudly:

- /rank marked live postings `expired`
- /apply fell back to search snippets, or to vague cover-letter prose
- /scrape stored listing-page `#fragment` URLs, which fetch fine and
  return unrelated jobs, so every later /rank and /apply run on that
  entry failed

Adds 09-web-research.md as the single reference: the trust boundary, a
curl browser-header retry with a tag-stripping extractor, a four-step
escalation order, the login-wall case, why the employer's own careers
posting beats an aggregator listing (the requisition ID and the grade
survive there), and the rule that a search-result snippet is a lead
rather than a source.

Wires it into /apply, /rank, /interview, /outcome, /notion-sync, the
job-scraper skill, and writing-style rule 5. Bumps 03-writing-style.md
to 1.2.0; 09-web-research.md starts at 1.0.0.

Aggregator examples are given generically (LinkedIn, Indeed, national
job boards) so the guidance holds in any market.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

* fix(web-research): gate the browser-header retry on robots.txt

Addresses review feedback on #277.

WebFetch identifies itself as Claude-User and honors robots.txt, so a 403 has
two very different causes and they must not be treated the same: a WAF default
on a site whose published policy allows access, or a site that has actually
declined. Retrying with browser headers in the second case circumvents the very
opt-out mechanism site owners are told they can rely on, and the core framework
cannot hold a looser standard than it asks of community forks.

The escalation now runs tools/robots_check.py before the retry. A disallow for
"*" or for "Claude-User" skips the retry entirely and goes to step 3 (find the
employer's own posting). The rule is stated plainly in 09-web-research.md so
later edits do not erode it: the retry exists to get past bot-filtering
firewalls on sites whose robots.txt permits access; it is never used to
override a site that has said no.

Two findings from testing the gate against live sites, both pinned by
tests/test_robots_check.py (15 offline cases):

- The WAF usually blocks robots.txt too. privatebank.barclays.com returns 403
  on the policy file to Claude-User and 200 to a browser, so a naive gate would
  block the retry on exactly the sites the retry is for. The checker reads the
  policy as a browser when the honest request is refused, then obeys it
  strictly - a policy you are prevented from reading cannot be honored, and
  robots.txt is not the protected resource.
- urllib.robotparser cannot be used. It ends a record at a blank line and
  matches rules in file order, so Barclays' real file (blank lines between
  "User-agent: *" and its rules, "Allow: /" before "Disallow: /cs/") reads as
  everything-allowed. That fails open, in the one direction that matters. The
  checker implements RFC 9309 longest-match instead, with ties resolved to
  Disallow rather than Allow.

Verified live: barclays /careers/ allowed and /cs/ blocked, ubs.com allowed,
jobup.ch /api/ blocked while /en/jobs/ stays allowed. 09-web-research.md
1.0.0 to 1.1.0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: kgb <kevingblackman@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
kblackma
2026-08-04 20:36:55 +02:00
committed by GitHub
co-authored by Claude Opus 5 kgb
parent 9aea6e7a44
commit fcefb8150f
12 changed files with 384 additions and 11 deletions
+10 -1
View File
@@ -93,7 +93,16 @@ command (see its SKILL.md — do not guess flags) to extract **key requirements*
**application deadline**, and a brief description snippet.
**From WebSearch results:** Use `WebFetch` on the posting URL and extract the same
fields manually.
fields manually. If it returns HTTP 403, retry with browser headers via curl per
`.claude/skills/job-application-assistant/09-web-research.md` before giving up — most
bank and corporate sites reject WebFetch's user agent while serving browsers normally.
**Store a URL that actually resolves to the posting.** A listing-page URL with a
`#fragment` appended (`.../jobs/ciso/#ikerian`) is not a posting: it fetches fine and
returns unrelated job titles, which makes every later `/rank` and `/apply` run fail on
that entry. When WebSearch only yields a listing page, search the employer's own careers
site for the role and store that URL instead, or drop the candidate rather than saving a
fragment link.
For every candidate:
- Skip if the URL or company+title combo already exists in `seen_jobs.json`