ai-job-search/CHANGELOG.md

# Changelog

All notable changes to this project are documented here. The format is based on
[Keep a Changelog](https://keepachangelog.com/en/1.1.0/), and this project adheres
to [Semantic Versioning](https://semver.org/spec/v2.0.0.html).

Releases are vetted checkpoints of `master`. If you maintain a personalized fork,
prefer updating to a tagged release over pulling raw `master` (see
[SETUP.md, section 8](SETUP.md#8-pulling-upstream-updates-into-your-fork)). The
`framework_version` markers on methodology files tell you which of your customized
files a release touched; `python3 tools/check_upstream_updates.py` lists them with
per-file diff commands.

## [Unreleased]

### Added

- **Source host verification in `/apply` Step 1** (#431, `.claude/commands/apply.md`,
  `tests/test_apply_host_check.py`) - before proceeding to draft CV and cover letters,
  Step 1 verifies the posting URL's provenance against installed portal boards and the
  six standard ATS apex domains (`greenhouse.io`, `lever.co`, `myworkdayjobs.com`/`workday.com`,
  `ashbyhq.com`, `smartrecruiters.com`, `workable.com`). Look-alike prefix/suffix spoofing
  fails closed, and unrecognized hosts are plainly flagged as unverified in the evaluation
  output (`⚠ Unverified source host: <hostname>`) before drafting tokens are spent.

- **`/expand` project and portfolio expansion** (`.claude/commands/expand.md`,
  `tests/test_expand_command.py`) - expands candidate discovery
  to technical projects from public GitHub repositories, extracting structured summaries
  (problem domain, tech stack, key technical challenges, and verifiable outcomes) to
  populate the `## Independent Projects` section of `01-candidate-profile.md`.

- **Stale sweep branch in `/outcome`** (`.claude/commands/outcome.md`,
  `tests/test_outcome_stale.py`) - introduces `/outcome stale [N]` (and `/outcome sweep [N]`)
  to batch-resolve open applications quiet for 60+ (or N) days. Displays a numbered summary
  of qualifying applications, requires explicit user confirmation (`all`, `select`, or `skip`),
  resolves confirmed rows to `no_response`, logs dated entries to `notes`, updates archive
  `outcome.md` files, and hands off to calibration when 3+ applications are resolved.

- **Mechanical layout verification for compiled PDFs** - `tools/verify_layout.py` measures
  what `/apply` Step 5b previously only eyeballed: per-page text extent, bottom whitespace,
  the largest internal vertical gap, footer collisions, and entry headers or section
  headings stranded at a page break. It exists for a failure that survives every existing
  check - a moderncv `\cventry` is an unbreakable `tabular`, so an entry that does not fit
  jumps to the next page and leaves a hole behind (observed at 273pt, roughly 19 blank
  lines) while the document still compiles, still reports the correct page count, and still
  passes `tools/verify_pdf.py`. Geometry comes from Poppler `pdftotext -bbox`; Poppler is
  optional repo-wide (since #369 `verify_pdf.py` prefers pypdf), and word bounding boxes
  have no pypdf equivalent, so this is the one step that still wants it. A missing Poppler
  - or the xpdf-based `pdftotext` Git for Windows puts ahead of it in PATH, which rejects
  `-bbox` - degrades to a `skipped:` exit 2 rather than reporting a phantom layout failure.
  Page count is deliberately left to `verify_pdf.py --pages` so that one rule keeps one
  implementation. Thresholds are calibrated for the stock moderncv and `cover.cls`
  geometry. Tests use synthetic page geometry, so they need neither Poppler nor a
  LaTeX toolchain.

### Fixed

- **`tools/verify_layout.py`'s `skipped:` message named only one cause of a broken
  extractor when there are two** (#451) - it blamed the xpdf-based `pdftotext` Git for
  Windows puts ahead of Poppler in PATH (no `-bbox` flag, exits 99), but a real Poppler
  can abort `-bbox`/`-bbox-layout`/`-htmlmeta` too: Poppler 26.0x before 26.05 crashes on
  any PDF whose Info dictionary carries an empty string in any field, and `hyperref`
  writes exactly that for every field it does not set. A `lualatex`/`pdflatex` document
  built with `hyperref` and no `\hypersetup{pdftitle=...}` - an ordinary `/add-template`
  CV template, not a malformed one - hits this with a working Poppler installed, and the
  old message sent the reader to check their PATH when nothing was wrong with it. The
  message now names both causes; behavior is unchanged, degrading to `skipped:` exit 2
  either way, since a broken extractor is still not a broken document.

- **The template-placeholder guard in `test_setup_command.py` now skips on forks** (#463) -
  `TemplatesStillCarryThePlaceholders` asserts that `05-cv-templates.md` and
  `06-cover-letter-templates.md` still contain `[FIRST_NAME]`, `[LAST_NAME]`, `[YOUR_EMAIL]`,
  `[YOUR_PHONE]`, `[YOUR_NAME]`, and `[YOUR_LINKEDIN_URL]`. Running `/setup` - the documented
  path, and what Step 3.5/3.6 of that command exist to do - replaces exactly those tokens, so on
  a personalized fork `python3 -m unittest discover -s tests` fails both checks permanently and
  marks every push red. The class now uses the same `@unittest.skipIf` on `GITHUB_REPOSITORY`
  (defaulting to upstream when unset, so local pristine-template runs still execute the guards)
  that `test_placeholder_integrity.py` received in #407. The guard landed three days after that
  fix and did not pick up the pattern; the `placeholder-integrity` CI job is upstream-gated and
  does not cover the `05`/`06` tokens, so `python-tests` was their only check.
- **`verify_pdf.py --contains` now sees through LaTeX's typographic substitutions and
  the pdflatex text layer keeps accents precomposed** (Discussions #385, #384) - the
  comparison folded whitespace only, but LaTeX ligatures `'` into U+2019 and `--` into
  U+2013, so on the stock CV compiled with the documented `lualatex` command
  `--contains "Master's degree"` and `--contains "2016-2024"` both reported the keyword
  missing from a document that plainly contains it (measured through both extractors;
  `Six Sigma` and `Statistics` on the same page passed). The documented remedy for a
  missing keyword is to add it, so the false negative nudged toward the one thing the ATS
  section forbids. `normalize_text()` now folds both sides - NFC, then curly
  apostrophes/quotes to ASCII, en/em dashes to `-`, no-break space to space - at
  comparison time only; `--dump-text` still writes the raw layer, because that is what an
  ATS parses and the date-range rule in `05-cv-templates.md` needs the raw en-dash visible
  there. Separately, pdflatex without T1 font encoding stores accents decomposed
  (`e` + U+0300; pypdf reads it as a stray spacing accent), which NFC cannot fully
  repair - moderncv 2.5 loads T1 itself under pdflatex but the apt-packaged 2.3.1 does
  not, so `cv/main_example.tex` and the guide's preamble gain
  `\ifpdftex\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}\fi`, a no-op on the lualatex path. Pinned by
  ten new `test_verify_pdf.py` cases (the fold-through ones fail on the whitespace-only
  code) and a `test_latex_guidance.py` guard that the line exists and stays
  pdflatex-only. Reported and diagnosed by 9scorp4. Fork users: your
  personalized `cv/main_example.tex` gains the one guarded preamble line on rebase (a clean
  3-way merge unless you edited the preamble); tailored CVs compiled with lualatex need nothing.
- **`jobdanmark-search detail` now backs off on 429/5xx like every other portal's detail
  command** - the handler called `fetch()` directly instead of going through the CLI's own
  request wrappers, so it carried none of the three things `apiFetch`/`apiPost` guarantee:
  no 429/5xx retry loop (a rate-limited detail page wrote `API_ERROR` and exited after one
  attempt, where jobnet, jobbank, jobindex, linkedin, and freehire all retry up to six
  times), a hand-inlined User-Agent string that would drift from the exported `USER_AGENT`,
  and a timeout the wrappers' tests never saw. `/scrape` calls `detail` once per
  shortlisted posting, so a burst that tripped jobdanmark's rate limiter dropped those
  postings outright - no description, no deadline - while the same burst on any other
  portal rode it out. Demonstrated by driving the real command handler with a stubbed 429:
  1 fetch attempt and exit 1 before, 7 attempts after (the contract's initial try plus six
  retries). Fixed by adding `htmlFetch` to `helpers.ts` with the same backoff schedule,
  timeout, and shared User-Agent as the JSON wrappers (404 returns `null` so `detail` keeps
  its `NOT_FOUND` contract) and routing `detail` through it. Pinned in the existing
  `retry-backoff`, `user-agent`, and `request-timeout` suites, which now cover all three
  wrappers, plus a new `detail-backoff.test.ts` that exercises the handler path itself -
  its retry cases fail against the bare `fetch()`.

- **`jobindex-search detail` no longer fetches arbitrary URLs or invents posting-shaped
  output** (#447) - the command fetched any `http(s)` input verbatim (no host check) and,
  when the path didn't match its one pattern, silently used the whole input URL as the job
  id; the only net was "the fetched page has a title", so a non-posting page came back as
  a well-formed fake posting with exit 0 (demonstrated with jobindex's own homepage:
  `id` = the URL, `title` = the site's tagline, `description` = navigation chrome). Every
  other portal CLI rejects unparseable detail input with `BAD_ID` and constructs its fetch
  URL from the extracted id; jobindex was the one CLI trusting the raw string - and
  `/scrape`/`/rank` agents feed it stored URLs, so a ghost or redirected URL (the #331
  class) yielded plausible garbage instead of an error. `buildUrl` now requires a
  jobindex.dk host (apex or subdomain - look-alike and userinfo tricks rejected via real
  URL parsing) plus a `/jobannonce/<id>` path, rebuilds the fetch URL from the extracted
  id (the canonical short form the bare-id path always used), and exits 1 with the
  stderr-JSON `BAD_ID` contract otherwise; bare ids stay permissive scheme- and
  slash-free tokens (the jobnet precedent - the server 404s unknowns loudly). Pinned by
  eight cases in the new `detail-input.test.ts`; the five rejection/canonicalization
  cases fail against the verbatim unguarded extraction. Complementary to the `/apply`
  host-check rule proposed in #431, which stays with its proposer.

- **`/outcome` and `/interview` no longer confuse two roles at the same company** (#443)
  (`.claude/commands/outcome.md`, `.claude/commands/interview.md`,
  `tests/test_apply_records_application.py`) - when a tracker row's `cv_file` /
  `cover_letter_file` columns are empty, both commands fell back to a company-prefix glob
  (`cv/main_<company>*.tex`). Two roles at one company both match it, so `/outcome` copied
  whichever the filesystem returned first into the archive as `cv_draft.tex` - the file whose
  purpose is to record what was actually submitted - and its own "leave an existing archived
  file" rule then made the wrong copy permanent. Both fallbacks now glob the full
  `<company>_<role>` stem, derived by the **Subfolder naming** rule in `documents/README.md`
  rather than restated, and skip with a note instead of widening the search. Dropping the
  hardcoded `.tex` also makes a template registered by `/add-template` findable.

- **`jobnet-search detail` no longer reports an externally hosted ad as not found** (#432) -
  Jobnet's `/FindJob/JobAdDetails/<id>` returns 404 for ads with `isExternal: true`, so `detail`
  on an ad `search` had just listed exited 1 with `NOT_FOUND`, and `/scrape` read the posting as
  gone rather than hosted elsewhere (2 of 3 ads in a fresh sample). On that 404 the command now
  falls back to the search endpoint, which does carry the ad's description and the external
  application URL, and returns the record marked `isExternal: true` with a stderr note; fields the
  search payload does not carry (`views`, `approvalStatus`, the boolean flags) are `null`, never
  guessed. Verified live on two external ads.

- **`09-web-research.md`'s curl snippets no longer write into the repo when `$SCRATCHPAD`
  is unset** - both runnable blocks in the 403-escalation path start with `cd "$SCRATCHPAD"`,
  and nothing in the repository ever sets that variable (`git grep 'SCRATCHPAD='` returns
  nothing). Unset, it expands to `cd ""`, which succeeds and leaves the shell where it
  started, so the `&&` chain proceeds and `curl -o page.html` writes to the working
  directory - in practice the checkout, which is exactly what the paragraph directly beneath
  the curl block forbids ("Write to the session scratchpad directory, never into the repo").
  The file's instruction and its own snippet disagreed, and the snippet won silently.
  Both expansions are now guarded with `${SCRATCHPAD:?...}`, turning a silent repo write into
  an immediate failure whose message names where the value comes from. Behaviour is unchanged
  wherever the variable is set. The same undefined reference in `.claude/commands/rank.md`
  was removed by #425 as a side effect of rewriting Step 2/4; this is the remaining instance.

- **`seen_jobs.json` keys are now a pure function of the posting** - `/scrape` Step 4 described
  the key as prose (`"<url_or_company_title_key>"`) and nothing said how to derive it, so each
  run slugified in its own way. Two failures followed, both observed in a live state file. Keys
  carried characters that break the path they later become: `/apply` and `/outcome` derive an
  archive folder from the same company+role pair, which is why `documents/README.md` has a
  subfolder rule, and keys like `deloitte_junior-cybersecurity-analyst-(ot/iot)` and
  `neverhack-estonia_penetration-tester-/-red-teamer` violate it. And the same posting was
  stored twice when two runs truncated one title at different points
  (`deloitte_cyber-intelligence-center-security-analy` and
  `...-security-analyst-at` are one job, one URL, two entries) - which defeats the dedup the
  file exists for. `tools/job_key.py` now owns the derivation: the slug is normalised, and
  truncation is length-capped *and* disambiguated by a hash of the full slug, so a long title
  always produces the same key and two long titles sharing a prefix cannot collide. Step 4
  calls the helper instead of describing it. `--audit` reports non-conforming entries in an
  existing state file and deliberately never rewrites them: stored keys are matched against
  `job_search_tracker.csv` by company+role elsewhere, so a silent rewrite would break the link
  between a stored job and its application record.
  Existing state files need no migration: Step 2's candidate filter matches a posting to a stored
  entry by URL regardless of that entry's key, so a workspace whose entries predate the helper does
  not see its still-live postings re-presented as new.

## [1.7.1] - 2026-09-06

### Added

- **CHANGELOG structure guard** (`tests/test_changelog_structure.py`) - every PR edits this one
  shared file by hand near the same line, and nothing checked the result: a second `### Fixed`
  heading landed directly under `[Unreleased]`, above `### Added`, on #425 and was fixed by hand
  at merge time. The `[Unreleased]` section is now checked on every PR for duplicate headings,
  headings outside the Keep a Changelog set, entries above any heading, and leftover conflict
  markers. Released sections are history and are not inspected.

- **`/rank` now consumes the `posted_date` #391 persists** (#390, the deferred second
  half) - Step 3 gains a staleness flag: a posting whose stored `posted_date` is more
  than 30 days old at rank time carries a visible ⚠ marker with its age spelled out
  alongside the score ("⚠ posted 2024-05-13, 27 months ago"), the same FLAG treatment as
  location and language - in the ranking, for the user to judge, never an exclusion (the
  #390 posting was 27 months old *and still live*; age is a signal, not a veto, and a
  future stored `deadline` outranks it). Costs no fetch: age is re-derived each run from
  the stored value and never persisted. Boundary rules carried over verbatim from the
  schema and rule 6: no `posted_date` or `null` means no flag and no guess (never
  inferred from `first_seen`), and unparseable values are treated as absent and reported
  once with their portal. Pinned by four new cases in `test_rank_command.py`, each
  verified to fail against the rule-less spec.

### Security

- **`settings.json` no longer pre-approves `bun run` on arbitrary files** (#396) - the
  template's permission allowlist granted `Bash(bun run:*)`, which auto-approved
  `bun run <any file on disk>` in every fork. It is now one path-scoped entry per shipped
  portal CLI, matching what each portal SKILL.md already declares. `/scrape` is unaffected
  for all portals, including ones added by `/add-portal` - the job-scraper skill's own
  `allowed-tools` carries the path-scoped wildcard that covers them during the workflow.
  Running a portal CLI ad hoc outside a skill now prompts once, which is the intended
  behavior for anything not on the reviewed list. Thanks @vkotaru.

### Fixed

- **`/setup` now fills the contact blocks inside `05-cv-templates.md` and
  `06-cover-letter-templates.md`, and `/reset` restores them** - Step 3 personalised
  `cv/main_example.tex` but never the LaTeX contact blocks embedded in the two template files
  `/apply` actually compiles from, so a full Path B or C run left `[YOUR_NAME]`, `[YOUR_EMAIL]`
  and `[YOUR_PHONE]` in both, and whether they reached a document depended on the drafter
  noticing (a real user ran `/setup` and then hand-edited both files, #420).
  `06-cover-letter-templates.md` was not a Step 3 target at all. Step 3.5 now names the `05`
  contact tokens, a new Step 3.6 covers the `06` contact line and signature (Path A never fills
  it, so it runs for every path), the completion summary lists `06`, and `/reset` clears both
  blocks instead of listing `06` as framework-only. Pinned by `tests/test_setup_command.py`; the
  existing `/reset` coverage test is what forced the `reset.md` half.

- **`/rank` no longer reads or rewrites the whole of `seen_jobs.json` on every run** (#395) -
  Step 1 used to read the entire state file into the conversation to select candidates by
  eye, and Step 4 emitted it back to record scores: a cost paid on every run regardless of
  batch size, growing for the life of the workspace. `tools/rank_state.py` now owns that
  traffic - `candidates` selects and projects only the fields a scoring agent needs, `sweep`
  runs rule 6's expiry pass on disk, and `apply` writes results back atomically and prints
  the rows Step 5's report is built from. Preserves Step 4's existing write-back rules
  exactly: the `location` → `location_verdict` legacy migration, the deadline
  null-is-not-a-correction rule, and verbatim strengths/gaps persistence. No scoring policy
  changes - no new status value, no new persisted field.

- **`jobbank-search`, `jobdanmark-search`, and `jobnet-search` detail commands now accept full URLs** -
  the portal contract specifies `detail <id|url>`. Passing a full posting URL (with or without
  trailing slashes, slug segments, or query parameters) previously caused `jobbank-search` and
  `jobdanmark-search` to construct invalid double-URL strings, and `jobnet-search` to interpolate the
  full URL into the API endpoint path. All three detail handlers now extract and normalize the
  underlying ID or slug via dedicated helper functions, and exit 1 with code `BAD_ID` on unparseable
  inputs, matching `linkedin-search` and `freehire-search`. Pinned by 24 unit tests across the three
  CLIs' `detail-url-normalization.test.ts`.

- **`/rank` now bounds each scoring batch** (#395) - a bare run scores at most 10
  eligible jobs instead of attempting the entire backlog. `--limit <N>` controls
  scoring independently of `--top`, and the report makes deferred work visible so
  re-running `/rank` can continue it.

- **The portal CLIs' unknown-flag guard no longer lets a single-dash flag through** (#426) -
  the guard in the four bunli-based CLIs (`jobnet`, `jobbank`, `jobindex`, `jobdanmark`) inspected
  only tokens starting with `--`, so an undefined *short* flag bypassed it entirely: bunli
  discarded it, the search ran unfiltered, and the CLI exited 0 with no error. Live against
  jobnet, `search -q "sygeplejerske"` returned all 18,179 ads as a successful search against 667
  for the real `--search-string` query - the same shape as review finding F13 (jobdanmark, 13,862
  results) that motivated the guard in the first place, reached by the likelier route: `-q` is the
  documented short for the keyword search in `linkedin-search`, `freehire-search` and
  `jobindex-search`, so a cross-portal habit produces it. Both dash forms are now checked, with
  declared shorts (`jobindex`'s `-q`) and bunli's built-in `-h`/`-v` still valid. A negative number
  is rejected too rather than skipped: bunli does not consume a `-`-prefixed token as the previous
  flag's value, so `--radius -5` silently fell back to the default radius instead of failing its
  own `min(1)` schema - erroring on it is the trade `linkedin-search` already makes, and a value
  that must begin with a dash uses the `--flag=value` form. `linkedin-search` and
  `freehire-search` were unaffected; they normalize `-x` to a long name before checking it. Pinned
  by thirteen new cases across the four CLIs' `cli-flag-validation.test.ts`, network-free because
  the guard runs before dispatch: eight bug-pinning cases (the short flag and the negative number,
  per CLI), each verified to fail on the unfixed guard, plus five regression guards that pass on
  both and exist to keep the fix from over-rejecting - `-h` in each CLI, and `jobindex`'s declared
  `-q`.

- **`jobdanmark-search` autocomplete no longer dies over one suggestion without text**
  (#421, closing out the #416/#418 audit - every other deref site in the six CLIs
  checked and confirmed guarded) - the filter derefed `item.text.toLowerCase()` from a
  cast API response on the same line that already guards `g.items ?? []`, so one item
  with a null or missing `text` threw `TypeError` and the whole command exited 1 as
  `API_ERROR`. The filter now lives in an exported `filterAutocompleteGroups` (the
  jobnet testability pattern), `text` is typed nullable so the compiler enforces the
  guard, and an item without usable text is skipped - it can never match the required
  non-empty query, so downstream output never sees one. Pinned by three cases in the
  new `autocomplete-filtering.test.ts`; the null-text case fails against the verbatim
  unguarded extraction with the exact production TypeError.

- **`jobnet-search` no longer dies over one ad with a null publication date** (#418, the
  sibling of #416 from the same audit) - `date: job.publicationDate.slice(0, 10)` trusted
  a TypeScript interface claim (`publicationDate: string`) that nothing validates at
  runtime: `apiFetch` casts the JSON body, so one `null` threw `TypeError` inside the
  `jobAds` map and the whole search of a default-ON portal exited 1 as `API_ERROR` - while
  the neighboring `applicationDeadline` field was already null-guarded with a `1900-01-01`
  sentinel check. The field is now typed nullable (so the compiler enforces the guard) and
  degrades per-item to `date: null`, the shape the `seen_jobs.json` contract documents.
  Pinned by a new case in `search-normalization.test.ts`, verified to fail on the unfixed
  code with the exact production TypeError.

- **Placeholder-integrity tests in `python-tests` now skip on forks** (#405) - the dedicated
  `placeholder-integrity` job already gates on the upstream repo name, but `python-tests` ran
  `unittest discover` with no such guard, so forks that personalized files via `/setup` failed
  three sentinel checks permanently. Both test classes now use `@unittest.skipIf` on
  `GITHUB_REPOSITORY` (defaulting to upstream when unset so local pristine-template runs still
  execute).
- **`convert_salary_excel.py` no longer mistakes a title/citation row for the header row**
  (#414) - header-row detection accepted the first row in the first 10 where *any* cell merely
  contained a company-pattern word, with no check that the row actually looked like a header. A
  source-citation line above the real header table - standard in real Danish union/statistics
  exports, e.g. "Kilde: ... opdelt efter arbejdsgiver ..." - tripped it purely because
  "arbejdsgiver" (employer) appeared in prose. The real header row then got parsed as a data row
  (its "Firma" cell became a bogus company entry), and every genuine company lost all its salary
  data, silently: exit 0, "Done! Wrote N company entries," with `categories: {}` on every one. A
  candidate row is now accepted only when a *different* cell in the same row also matches a
  city/count/index pattern - same-cell corroboration doesn't count, since a citation sentence can
  pack a count-pattern word into the same sentence as the company-pattern one (e.g. "...opdelt
  efter arbejdsgiver, antal svar 1234"). Sheets whose only real header has purely untyped salary
  columns (e.g. "Base pay 2025" / "Bonus 2025", neither of which matches a known city/count/index
  pattern) have nothing to corroborate against in any row, so detection falls back to the original
  any-cell-mentions-company rule when the strict pass finds nothing in the first 10 rows. As a
  backstop independent of either pass, a sheet that ends up with zero detected salary columns now
  prints a warning instead of reporting success silently. Pinned by four cases in
  `tests/test_convert_salary_excel.py`: the original citation-row and zero-columns cases fail
  against the pre-fix script; the same-cell-corroboration and untyped-column-fallback cases each
  fail against the single-pass version of this fix that came before the fallback was added.

- **`jobbank-search` no longer dies over one malformed feed date** (#416) - `new Date()`
  on a present-but-unparseable `pubDate` yields an Invalid Date whose `toISOString()`
  throws `RangeError`, and `normalizeSearchItem` runs inside an unguarded `items.map()`,
  so a single bad RSS item killed the entire search with `{"error": "Invalid Date",
  "code": "API_ERROR"}` and exit 1 - a whole default-ON portal lost to one item, with
  the error pointing at the API. The un-CDATA'd fallback capture in `parseRssItems` can
  deliver exactly such a value. An unparseable `pubDate` now degrades to the same shape
  as an absent one (`posted` empty, `date: null`, per the `seen_jobs.json` contract that
  #391 put this field on), and every other item survives. Pinned by three new cases in
  `search-normalization.test.ts`, each verified to fail on the unfixed code.

- **`linkedin-search` rejects fractional numeric flags instead of silently changing
  the query** (#371) - bare `parseInt` truncated values before validation, so
  `--jobage 0.5` became `0` and silently omitted LinkedIn's `f_TPR` freshness filter
  while the CLI reported no argument error. `--jobage`, `--jobage-minutes`, `--page`,
  and `--limit` now accept whole numbers >= 1 only and reject fractions and zero with
  the stderr-JSON `BAD_ARG` contract, matching the other portal CLIs. Pinned by eight
  cases verified to fail on the unfixed CLI. Reported by @Meet6338-X.

- **`linkedin-search detail` accepts LinkedIn job URLs with trailing slashes** (#411) -
  passing a job URL with a trailing slash (e.g., `https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/<id>/`
  or a slugged variant with or without query strings) failed validation and exited 1 with
  `BAD_ID` before any network request because the regex delimiter strictly expected `?`
  or end-of-string immediately after the numeric ID. The boundary check now matches
  `[\/?]`, correctly extracting IDs from browser-copied URLs, regional subdomains, and
  links with tracking parameters. Pinned by eleven new cases in `parsing.test.ts`.

- **The `documents/interview/**` ignore rule no longer claims interview prep is written there**
  (#336). `/interview` saves its pack to
  `documents/applications/<company>_<role>/interview_prep_<stage>.md`, already ignored by
  `documents/applications/**`; nothing has ever written to `documents/interview/`. Nothing leaked -
  but it was the personal-data block's one dedicated line about interview material, so an auditor
  checking the framework's most sensitive artifact had every reason to read it and stop, at the
  only path in the block with no writer. The protection rationale now sits above
  `documents/applications/**`, the rule that actually provides it, so the next reader finds it
  where it lives; `documents/interview/**` stays, relabelled belt-and-braces rather than primary
  guard (`REQUIRED_IGNORE_RULES` pins it, so removing it from `.gitignore` alone fails the guard).
  Pinned by `tests/test_security_guards.py`, which derives the prep-pack path from
  `/interview`'s own spec instead of hardcoding it - so moving that path fails CI rather than
  quietly re-staling the comment.

- **`/scrape` now persists each posting's publication date** (#390) - Step 2's contract guarantees a
  `date` on every portal CLI's search output (CI enforces it in `test_scrape_contract.py`) and
  Step 1b uses that date to scope a run to the last 14 days, but Step 4's `seen_jobs.json` schema
  stored no posting date at all: `first_seen` is when the scraper saw an entry, not when the
  employer posted it. The freshness window was therefore unauditable the moment a run ended, and
  `/rank` - which reads the stored entry, not the run - had no age signal to weigh. A
  `freehire-search` posting dated 2024-05-13 was scraped 27 months later and ranked Strong Fit at
  position 1 of 133; the scoring note recorded that the listing "may be long stale" in prose
  nothing reads, and an `/apply` run drafted a tailored CV and cover letter against it. The schema
  gains `posted_date` (`null` when the portal returned no date, never inferred or backfilled).
  Pinned by three new cases in `test_scrape_contract.py`, each verified to fail on the unfixed
  spec. Reported and diagnosed from a real run by @sandunwijerathne.

- **`salary_lookup.py` no longer crashes on a `null` `metadata` or `categories`** - `--validate`
  treats an explicit `"metadata": null` / `"categories": null` the same as an omitted key (the
  shape checks are "...must be an object *when provided*" and skip `None`), but the renderer read
  both through `dict.get(key, {})`, which only substitutes the default for an *absent* key - a
  present-but-null value passed straight through. `format_entry` then hit `None.get("index_label",
  ...)` (`AttributeError`) or, via the numeric-field fallback, `None[key] = value` (`TypeError`),
  so a hand-maintained `salary_data.json` using `null` for "no value here" died with an uncaught
  traceback right after printing `Found 1 match(es)`. `format_entry` now coerces both to `{}` up
  front, so `null`, absent, and `{}` behave identically. Pinned by four cases in
  `test_salary_lookup.py` - two unit calls into `format_entry` and two end-to-end (`main()
  --validate` blesses the file, then the lookup path renders it), one per null shape, all verified
  to fail on the unfixed renderer.

## [1.7.0] - 2026-08-29

### Fixed

- **Fork clones no longer point `gh issue create` at the upstream public tracker
  undetected** (#389) - `gh repo fork --clone`, the exact command SETUP.md's fork step
  recommends, sets the *upstream* repo as gh's default repository, and gh uses the
  default for creating issues and PRs - so a user's own automation ("file a tracking
  issue per application") silently published personal job-search data on the upstream
  repo, under the user's identity, where they cannot delete it (four live instances from
  two users in one week). SETUP.md section 2 now adds `gh repo set-default
  <your-username>/ai-job-search` directly to the fork commands with a warning at the
  point of decision (the #348 pattern), and a new `.github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/` carries the
  same heads-up the PR template already had, for the web-UI path. Blank issues stay
  enabled - the template warns, it does not gatekeep.
- **`freehire-search` fractional numeric flags no longer silently change the query** (#373) -
  `parseIntFlag` used bare `parseInt`, so a fractional value was truncated instead of
  rejected: `--jobage 0.5` became `0`, failed the `jobage > 0` guard, and the
  `posted_within_days` freshness filter was silently omitted from the outbound request
  while the CLI exited 0 - on a default-ON `/scrape` portal, exactly the
  discarded-filter failure the CLI's own `UNKNOWN_FLAG` guard documents. Numeric flags
  (`--jobage`/`--page`/`--limit`) now accept whole numbers >= 1 only, mirroring the
  Danish CLIs' `z.coerce.number().int().min(1)` contract, and reject everything else
  with the stderr-JSON `BAD_ARG` error. The sibling of #371 (`linkedin-search`), which
  remains with its reporter. Pinned by five new cases in `cli-flag-validation.test.ts`,
  each verified to fail on the unfixed code.

### Added

- **`linkedin-search detail` reports closed postings** (#280, adopted with the original
  author's commit preserved) - a new `isActive` field: `false` when the posting page
  renders LinkedIn's own "No longer accepting applications" top-card banner. Detection
  is scoped to the top card and pinned by fixture tests in both directions, including
  the false-positive case the review required (recruiter boilerplate quoting the closed
  phrase in a *description* must not flag a live job - on the unscoped first version it
  did, and the new tests fail there). Only the two markers real closed pages carry are
  matched (`closed-job__flavor` and the banner text, verified against live guest
  pages); three speculative phrases from the first version were dropped as
  false-positive-only risk. `/scrape` Step 2 now consumes the signal: a closed-at-source
  job is recorded in `seen_jobs.json` as `"status": "expired"` - marked, never silently
  dropped, per the `/rank` pattern - which is the fix for the ghost-LinkedIn-jobs class
  in #331 (an expired LinkedIn URL redirects to a *similar live job*, so a stored hit
  can die unnoticed between scrape and click). `isActive: true` is documented as
  absence of the banner, not proof the posting is open.
- **pypdf ATS text-layer fallback** - `/apply` Step 5d and `tools/verify_pdf.py` extract the CV PDF text layer with **pypdf** first (BSD, `pip install pypdf`) so Windows machines without Poppler still get a mechanical parseability check. Poppler `pdftotext -layout -enc UTF-8` remains the fallback; if both are missing the check still degrades to a visual keyword review. No extra cache or installer. `05-cv-templates.md` `framework_version` 1.4.2 → 1.4.3.
- **CI now tests the full documented Python range** (#370) - the Python tool tests job
  runs a 3.10-3.14 version matrix instead of pinning 3.12, so both the documented 3.10
  minimum and the newest Python are continuously verified. Grew out of an independent
  cross-platform verification (Windows + Linux, Python 3.14) contributed by
  @atiqur-rahman-pro, whose report also confirmed the suite's expected
  PyYAML-dependent skips in a clean container. Thanks!
- **Company-research cache for `/apply` and `/interview`** - `/apply` Step 3's reviewer
  agent and `/interview` Step 2 each independently execute the Company Research
  Checklist (`04-job-evaluation.md`) for the same company, so applying and later
  prepping for an interview on the same application researches the company twice from
  scratch. A new `company_research/<normalized-name>.json` cache (30-day TTL, documented
  in `04-job-evaluation.md` alongside the checklist it mirrors) lets either consumer
  reuse a recent result instead of repeating the search/fetch work. This does not
  change how a claim gets verified: cached research is a lead, exactly like
  reviewer-agent research already is under `03-writing-style.md` rule 5 - only the
  discovery step is cached, never the final verification before a claim ships in a
  cover letter or prep pack. `company_research/*.json` added to `.gitignore` and
  `security_guards.py`'s `REQUIRED_IGNORE_RULES` (a plain rooted pattern, not `**/`
  -prefixed - the cache is referenced from commands, not a skill, so it resolves
  against the repo root normally). Pinned by the new
  `tests/test_company_research_cache.py`. Cache contents are documented as data, never
  instructions, for a later session reading the file - the same trust-boundary rule
  `apply.md` Step 0 states for the posting itself, since cache notes are written from
  the same fetched web content. The verification-still-applies restatement in both
  `apply.md` and `interview.md`'s cache-check paragraphs is now pinned too.
- **CI now compiles the LaTeX examples on Debian bookworm's apt-packaged TeX Live** (the
  separate-PR follow-up invited in #323's review). The `latex-smoke` job ran only
  `texlive/texlive:latest` - the environment that never had the #242 bug, so the moderncv-2.3.1
  compile fix shipped guarded by nothing: the next edit to `cv/main_example.tex` could
  reintroduce a `\firstnamestyle` override or a top-level `\usepackage{hyperref}` and CI would
  stay green. The job is now a two-leg matrix, `texlive-latest` unchanged and `debian-bookworm`
  installing TeX Live 2022 from apt (moderncv 2.3.1, verified in a real bookworm container:
  both documents compile clean and the strict stock assertions - 2-page CV, 1-page cover
  letter, extractable text - pass on both legs unchanged). `--no-install-recommends` keeps the
  leg lean, which makes two font packages explicit requirements: `texlive-fonts-extra`
  (moderncv loads fontawesome5) and `texlive-fonts-recommended` (hyperref's xetex driver
  probes the `pzdr` metrics). **Note for repo admins:** the matrix renames the check from
  "Compile example CV and cover letter" to two leg-suffixed names, so a branch-protection
  rule requiring the old name needs updating once.

### Fixed

- **`/reset profile` left candidate data in two of the skill files it claims to clear**
  (#364) - `/setup` Step 3 populates six skill files; the profile scope cleared four.
  `04-job-evaluation.md` was listed by name under "files NOT touched (they contain
  framework rules, not candidate data)" while Step 3.4 writes the user's match areas,
  career goals, energizing/draining tasks, financial situation and schedule constraints
  into it - and CI's placeholder-integrity job already guards it under "personal data may
  have been committed". `job-scraper/search-queries.md`, which Step 3.8 fills with their
  job boards, role titles, domain keywords, city and commute tiers, appeared nowhere in
  `reset.md` at all. Both are tracked and unignored, so the Step 1 preview asked the user
  to confirm a wipe list that omitted them and Step 4 then reported a blank profile while
  `/rank` kept scoring against the old skills and career goals and `/scrape` kept running
  the old city and queries. Both files are now previewed and cleared, restoring their
  `/setup` placeholders while preserving the scoring framework and the query structure;
  `04-job-evaluation.md` is out of the preserved list, which keeps `03-writing-style.md`
  and `06-cover-letter-templates.md` (correctly - the latter's `[YOUR_NAME]` tokens are
  LaTeX scaffolding Step 3 never writes to). `CLAUDE.md` and `cv/main_example.tex` stay
  outside the `profile` scope, which covers skill files only, and the preview and Step 4
  now say so instead of implying a full wipe. `tests/test_reset_command.py` gains a
  profile-scope guard alongside its documents-scope one, deriving the file list from
  `/setup` Step 3's own headings so a future `/setup` target that `/reset` forgets fails
  in CI; the third case pins that a personalized file is never labelled framework-only,
  which a filename search alone would have missed.
- **`salary_lookup.py` never stripped the dotted "A.M.B.A." legal suffix** (#356) - the
  `STRIP_PATTERNS` regex ended in `\.\b`, and a word boundary can't sit between a literal
  dot and the space or end-of-string that follows it in real company names, so the
  pattern was dead code: `"Arla Foods A.M.B.A."` normalized differently from
  `"Arla Foods amba"` and fuzzy-matched at 86 instead of 100. The trailing dot is now
  optional (`\.?\b`), both forms normalize identically, and two regression tests pin it.
  Thanks @Ritik650.

## [1.6.0] - 2026-08-19

### Added

- **Cross-portal `/scrape` contract pin** (#344) - a repo-level test deriving the Step 2
  search-output field list (`title`, `company`, `location`, `date`, `url`) from
  `job-scraper/SKILL.md`'s own contract sentence and checking every installed portal
  CLI's search source for it, so a portal that quietly stops emitting a contract field
  (the failure class jobnet and jobdanmark actually shipped before #339/#340) fails CI
  with a clean diff instead of degrading every `/scrape` run silently. The pin survived
  the #347 output-shape changes unmodified - evidence the derived-from-spec design holds.
  Contributed by @oscarbol09, the invited follow-up from #342's review.
- **`freehire-search` gains `--no-description` for cheap discovery passes** - a default
  search hydrates full description bodies (~73% of the payload, ~20k tokens per query)
  while `/scrape` is told to pre-filter by title before reading bodies. The new flag
  drops the bodies (a live 10-result search shrinks from ~58k to ~10k chars) while
  keeping every other field; hydration stays the default. The API currently returns
  bodies regardless of `include_description=false`, so the lean guarantee is enforced
  client-side. Pinned in `tests/commands.test.ts`.
- **Fixture coverage for linkedin's date/location and jobindex's `parseSearchPage`** -
  linkedin's search-card fixture carried no `<time>` or location element, so deleting
  the `date` extraction (a `/scrape` contract field on a default-ON portal) left every
  test green; jobindex's Stash parser had no tests at all, so `meta.total` could stop
  using `hitcount` unnoticed. Four new linkedin cases (both listdate class variants,
  location, absent-element nulls) and a new jobindex `search-page.test.ts` (hitcount
  vs page count, contract-field mapping, deadline fallbacks). Both mutation-verified.
- **Tests for `check_framework_version.py`** - the CI gate that stops a framework file
  from being edited without a `framework_version` bump had zero tests, so the one-line
  mutation `return meaningful_changes > 0` -> `return False` disabled it while the suite
  stayed green. Four cases in the new `tests/test_check_framework_version.py` (clean
  tree, unbumped edit, bumped edit, missing marker), each running the real script inside
  an isolated git repo. Mutation-verified against that exact disable.
- **Tests for `lint_skills.py`'s skill and command checks** - only `check_settings()`
  had coverage; the linter's main job (frontmatter keys, `allowed-tools` targets
  existing, the `# /<name>` command title rule) was unasserted, so deleting the
  missing-allowed-tools error survived the whole suite. Four new cases in
  `tests/test_lint_skills.py`, with the fixture's yaml stub upgraded to parse the real
  frontmatter. Mutation-verified.
- **Discriminating tests for `robots_check`'s tie-break and browser-UA fallback** - the
  existing tie test put Disallow first, the one ordering that cannot detect deletion of
  the tie-break clause; and the browser-readback recovery that `09-web-research.md`
  claims is covered had no test at all. Three new tests in `tests/test_robots_check.py`
  pin the Allow-first tie, the 403-to-honest/200-to-browser recovery, and that a
  browser-fetched policy is still obeyed strictly. Each was mutation-verified: deleting
  the tie-break clause or the UA fallback now fails the suite.
- **LaTeX special-character guidance for CVs** (`framework_version` 1.4.1 -> 1.4.2 in
  `05-cv-templates.md`, 1.0.1 -> 1.0.2 in `06-cover-letter-templates.md`) - `05` gains a
  "LaTeX Special Characters" section and `06`'s existing one is completed beyond `\_`/`\&`.
  The load-bearing case is an unescaped `%` in a quantified achievement bullet: it starts a
  LaTeX comment, so "cut latency by 40% and saved DKK 2M" compiles with zero errors and
  renders as "cut latency by 40" - silent content loss in the deliverable, on exactly the
  content the guidance steers users to write. `&` in employer names (Bang & Olufsen, H&M)
  fails loudly at compile time and is now documented alongside. Pinned by
  `tests/test_latex_guidance.py`.

- **`seen_jobs.json` entries record which mechanism produced them** - a new additive `source`
  field (`cli` for Step 1b portal-CLI output, `websearch` for the Step 1c fallback), a Step 1c
  rule tagging fallback results at collection time, and a `fallback (websearch):` line in the
  Step 5 run summary naming the portals that ran on the fallback. Motivated by the
  ghost-LinkedIn-jobs report (#331): when a stored job later turns out not to exist at its URL,
  triage hinges on whether the entry came from live CLI output or a search index that can be
  weeks stale - evidence that previously lived only in the run's scrollback. An entry that is
  missing `source` predates the field and is never backfilled; a presented job with no
  `seen_jobs.json` entry at all points at fabrication, which the scraper's Rule 1 forbids.
  Pinned by `tests/test_scrape_provenance.py`. `job-scraper/SKILL.md` sits outside the
  `framework_version`-marked set, so no version bump applies.

### Changed

- **BREAKING (scripts passing stray flags): all six portal CLIs reject unknown flags**
  with exit 1 and `{"error", "code": "UNKNOWN_FLAG"}` on stderr, instead of silently
  discarding them. A discarded filter changes what a search returns with no error - a
  wrong flag name on jobdanmark returned the entire database (13,862 results, none
  matching) as if it matched the query, and the six portals use four different names for
  the free-text flag, so cross-portal guessing is likely. `add-portal.md` already
  required contributed portals to exit 1 on a bogus flag; the reference CLIs now meet
  their own bar. Pinned by nine new cases across the six `cli-flag-validation` suites.
- **`/rank` persists its location verdict as `location_verdict`** - the bare `location`
  key meant two incompatible things in `seen_jobs.json`: a place (scraper search output,
  driving the commute filter) and a PASS/FAIL/FLAG verdict (`/rank` Step 4), so ranking
  could overwrite "Aarhus, Denmark" with "PASS" and no reader could tell which meaning a
  stored value carried. Legacy entries are read compatibly (a PASS/FAIL/FLAG string in
  `location` counts as the verdict when `location_verdict` is absent) and migrated on
  re-write. The `seen_jobs` schema note in `job-scraper/SKILL.md` now also enumerates
  `location_verdict`/`language_gate`/`language_note`, so its "do not drop any of these
  fields" instruction finally covers the fields `/rank` calls as important as the score.
  Pinned by two new tests in `tests/test_rank_command.py`.
- **`linkedin-search detail` drops the `applyUrl` field** - the extraction regex
  assumed `class=` before `href=` and never matched LinkedIn's real markup (`null` on
  every live posting since the markup ordering differs), and fixing the regex would only
  capture the job-view URL, a duplicate of the record's own `url`. The field and the
  SKILL.md "apply link" claim are removed; a test pins the removal.
- **`jobdanmark-search` search output drops presentation-only keys** - `coverImage`,
  `companyLogo`, `companyLogoSvgMarkup`, `overlayColor`, and `silhouetteLogo` were ~40%
  of a live payload (a 30-result response shrinks from ~30k to ~20k chars), fed into
  agent context on every `/scrape` query, and unusable by an agent. The #340
  compatibility duplicates (`companyName`, `publishedDate`, `applicationDeadline`) and
  `slug` stay. Pinned in `tests/search-normalization.test.ts`.
- **BREAKING (jobbank forks): `jobbank-search` search output emits `deadline` as
  `YYYY-MM-DD`** - the feed's `DD.MM.YYYY` parenthetical was passed through raw,
  contradicting the `/scrape` contract, the other portals, and the same CLI's own
  `detail` command (which already emits ISO for the same job). `01.09.2026` is also
  ambiguous to a date parser (1 Sep vs 9 Jan). The known shape is now converted;
  "løbende" still maps to `null`, and an unrecognized shape passes through for `/rank`'s
  defensive handling. Anything parsing the old `DD.MM.YYYY` output must update - though
  the README's own search example already showed the ISO form. Pinned in
  `tests/rss-parsing.test.ts` and `tests/search-normalization.test.ts`.
- **Job matching reframed around function, not title** (`framework_version` 1.2.2 -> 1.2.3 in
  `04-job-evaluation.md`) - title-lookalike matching throws away career capital that doesn't
  fit one job-title box (e.g. a background spanning research leadership, platform ownership,
  and program management gets collapsed into whichever single title sounds closest). `/setup`,
  `search-queries.md`, and `04-job-evaluation.md` now guide the candidate to define priority
  categories by function - the kind of problem a role solves - and to list several plausible
  job titles as query variants within each category, rather than betting an entire priority
  tier on one exact title string.

- **CONTRIBUTING: invited PRs are reserved for the invitee** - when a maintainer comment
  explicitly invites a named contributor to implement an issue they diagnosed or designed,
  the implementation is theirs for a stated window (default seven days, longer on request);
  a duplicate PR filed inside that window closes in the invitee's favor regardless of
  arrival order. Prospective from 2026-08-14. Sits alongside the existing credit norm.

### Fixed

- **Onboarding warns about public forks at the point of decision** (#345) - the quick
  start walked a new user into `gh repo fork` (forks of public repos are always public)
  and two steps later had `/setup` write personal data into tracked files, with the only
  complete warning sitting in SETUP.md section 8 - a section about pulling updates that a
  first-time user has no reason to open. A real user hit exactly this. The warning now
  sits adjacent to both fork commands (README step 1, SETUP.md section 2), and `/setup`
  checks the origin's visibility **before** writing anything: a public-fork origin gets a
  confirm-first warning instead of a note after every file is already on disk. Reported
  by @basilevs with a complete reproduction and fix analysis. Pinned by the new
  `tests/test_onboarding_privacy.py`.
- **`jobindex-search detail` rewritten against jobindex's current markup** - every
  selector the old parser used is gone from live pages, so on 4 of 5 live postings it
  returned CSS-comment text as the deadline (`"K \t\t... */"`), an external ATS URL as
  its own `id` and `url`, null company/location/date, and a 160-char teaser as the
  description - exit 0 every time. The new parser handles both live shapes (the
  jobindex-native `jd-*` layout and the external-ATS passthrough), always keeps the
  jobindex id and `jobannonce` URL, requires a real date next to the deadline label and
  scans only visible markup (killing the CSS-comment capture), converts Danish long
  dates to ISO, and reports `company: null` honestly on passthrough pages instead of
  the ATS brand. Verified live on 5/5 postings (full descriptions of 5.5-9k chars, 4/5
  ISO deadlines and locations). Fixture tests for both shapes, including the
  CSS-comment trap, in the new `tests/detail-parsing.test.ts`.
- **`/scrape` gains a recency fallback for portals with no recency flag** - Step 1b.3
  told every portal to scope to 14 days "using the portal's supported recency flag", but
  jobdanmark has none, leaving the instruction unsatisfiable there: the agent either
  silently skipped the scoping or invented a flag (which the CLIs now reject). Every
  portal emits a `date` field, so the instruction now says to filter client-side after
  the call, and stops presenting `--order` (a sort) as interchangeable with a filter.
  Pinned in `tests/test_scrape_provenance.py`.
- **`/html-report`'s funnel counts stages from history; the rejection rate stops
  counting non-rejections** - the funnel was computed from current status, which is a
  state, not a history: an application that interviewed and was then rejected never
  counted as reaching Interview, so a finished search rendered as though nobody ever
  interviewed. The funnel (Step 2 and chart 4) now derives stage-reached from current
  status plus the `outcome.md` stage checkboxes Step 1.2 already merges. And the
  rejection rate no longer counts `offer_declined` (a success) or `withdrawn`
  (candidate-initiated) as rejections, nor unresolved Interview/Offer rows in its
  denominator. Pinned by two new tests in `tests/test_html_report_command.py`.
- **`jobdanmark-search detail`'s HTML fallback emits the same shapes as its JSON-LD
  branch** - a posting without JSON-LD returned `datePosted` as the page's raw
  `DD-MM-YYYY` text, `validThrough` as free text (including the literal `"Løbende"`,
  which would flow into stored data as a deadline), and a hardcoded `null`
  `addressLocality`. The fallback now converts overview dates to `YYYY-MM-DD`, maps
  `Løbende` to `null` (jobbank's precedent for the equivalent), and derives the locality
  from the workplace address with the same postcode extraction search uses. Pinned in
  `tests/detail-parsing.test.ts`.
- **`jobnet-search detail` no longer leaks the `1900-01-01` undisclosed-deadline
  sentinel** - `search` maps the API's sentinel to `null` (with a test pinning it), but
  `detail` dumped the raw response, so a posting whose deadline is simply not disclosed
  contributed a deadline 126 years in the past to stored data, and `/rank`'s expiry
  sweep would retire the job instantly. All three output formats now flow through a
  `prepareDetail` normalization that maps the sentinel to `null`. Pinned in
  `tests/detail-formatting.test.ts`.
- **CI's placeholder guard now watches the CV's actual personal-data lines** - the
  sentinel for `cv/main_example.tex` was `[YOUR_NAME]`, whose only occurrences are a
  header comment and the hyperref `pdftitle`; `/setup`'s documented edit replaces the
  `\name{}`/`\address{}`/`\phone{}`/`\email{}` data and touches neither, so a fully
  personalized CV with a real name, address, phone and email passed the check (proven
  empirically in the review). The guard now asserts sentinels inside the `\name{}` and
  `\email{}` lines, and `01-candidate-profile.md`'s sentinel moves from the `<!-- SETUP`
  header comment onto the `[YOUR_EMAIL]` Identity field for the same reason. The new
  `tests/test_placeholder_integrity.py` simulates the `/setup` edit and requires the
  guard to fire on it.
- **`jobindex-search` maps ASAP postings' deadline to `null`** - the portal's
  `apply_deadline_asap` flag was emitted as the literal string `"ASAP"` on roughly half
  of live results, contradicting the CLI's own README ("date string; null if not
  listed") and the `/scrape` schema, and breaking every consumer that does date
  arithmetic (`/rank`'s urgency and expiry sweep, `/outcome`'s deadline check,
  `/notion-sync`'s typed date column). ASAP means "no stated deadline", which the
  contract already represents as `null`. Pinned in `tests/search-page.test.ts`.
- **`/gmail-sync` no longer restricts its search to the Inbox** - the query used
  `in:inbox` to "skip sent/drafts", but that operator also excludes every archived
  message, and self-defeatingly the mail matched by the very job-search label Step 3.1
  hunts for (the standard filter that applies such a label also archives). The query now
  uses `-in:sent -in:drafts`, which matches the stated intent exactly. The failure mode
  was silent under-detection: a missed rejection or interview invite read as "no
  updates". Pinned by the new `tests/test_gmail_sync_command.py`.
- **`/upskill` no longer divides by a blank `fit_rating`** - `/outcome` creates tracker
  rows for applications made outside the workflow with no fit evaluation, so their
  `fit_rating` is blank, and Step 3.3's `(100 - fit_rating) / 100` had no rule for that.
  The naive blank-as-0 reading yields weight 1.0 (the maximum), letting the one job the
  framework knows nothing about dominate the skill-gap heatmap. A blank or non-numeric
  `fit_rating` now falls back to a matched ranked entry's `rank_score`, else the row is
  skipped, counted, and reported once - mirroring the skill's own missing-`gaps`
  handling. Pinned by `tests/test_upskill_skill.py`.
- **`/rank`'s expiry sweep parses stored deadlines defensively** - the sweep changes
  status automatically from a date comparison against values on disk, but portals have
  shipped non-ISO shapes into `seen_jobs.json` (`"ASAP"`, `DD.MM.YYYY`, free text), and
  `/rank` had no rule for them while the display-only `/outcome` already did. A stored
  deadline that is not `YYYY-MM-DD` is now treated exactly like an absent one wherever a
  stored deadline is compared (urgency and sweep), and reported once with its portal.
  Pinned by `tests/test_rank_command.py`.
- **Language Gate preamble no longer claims the gate is untracked** (`framework_version`
  1.2.3 -> 1.2.4 in `04-job-evaluation.md`) - the paragraph still said the result "is not
  a field `/scrape` or `/rank` track", written before the gate was wired into both
  consumers. An agent reading the authoritative framework file learned the opposite of
  what `rank.md` itself insists on ("These veto fields are as important to persist as
  the score itself"). The preamble now names `language_gate`/`language_note` and how each
  consumer uses them; a coupling test in `tests/test_rank_command.py` keeps the framework
  text honest about the tracking.
- **`/reset documents` now clears `documents/postings/`** - the drop folder for
  hand-pasted job posting text was absent from the preview, the delete block, and the
  user-facing scope description, after which the command told the user "The `documents/`
  folder is now empty" - false whenever postings were present, and they are exactly the
  personal residue a reset exists to clear. A new `tests/test_reset_command.py` derives
  the folder list from the git tree, so any future drop folder fails the test until
  `/reset` covers it.
- **`convert_salary_excel.py` no longer corrupts US/UK-formatted numbers 1000x** - the
  both-separators branch always assumed European locale, so a `"1,234.56"` cell was
  silently converted to `1.23456` and written into `salary_data.json`. The rule is now
  "the separator that appears last is the decimal separator", which also makes
  multi-group values (`"1,234,567.89"`, `"1.234.567,89"`) parse instead of raising. And
  `strip_type_patterns` now strips `COMPOUND_PATTERNS` words as substrings, mirroring
  `header_matches`, so a Danish compound header pair ("Antal alle" / "Lønindeks alle")
  pairs into one category instead of two unpaired standalones - the exact locale the
  compound support was added for. Pinned by six new cases in
  `tests/test_convert_salary_excel.py`.
- **`jobdanmark-search` extracts the city when a comma follows the postcode** - the
  `location` regex required whitespace after the 4-digit postcode, but live
  `companyAddress` values frequently read `"2670, Greve"`; those results emitted
  `location: null` (7 of 30 in a live sample), so `/scrape`'s geography/commute filter
  (Rule 3) had nothing to act on. The extraction now accepts an optional comma, trims the
  captured city, and still refuses to mistake a 4-digit street number for the postcode.
  Pinned by three new cases in `tests/search-normalization.test.ts`.
- **Example-CV bullets no longer swallowed as LaTeX optional labels** - every placeholder
  bullet written as `\item [text]` (11 in `cv/main_example.tex`, 3 in
  `06-cover-letter-templates.md`'s taught template) let LaTeX parse the bracketed text as
  `\item`'s optional argument: the shipped example CV rendered all Professional Experience
  bullets clipped off the left page edge, with the word "Achievement" appearing 9 times in
  the source and 0 times in the PDF text layer - a clean compile, green CI. Bullets are now
  braced (`\item {[text]}`), the cover-letter guide teaches the braced form, and CI's stock
  PDF assertions additionally require `Achievement` to survive `pdftotext`. Pinned by
  `tests/test_latex_guidance.py`.
- **Documented ATS extraction commands pin `-enc UTF-8`** - `pdftotext -layout` without an
  encoding flag emits Latin-1 on Xpdf builds, so every non-ASCII character in a correct CV
  (Rambøll, Ingeniør, København) read back as a replacement character and failed the
  parseability checklist, steering the agent to "fix" a healthy document. The commands in
  `apply.md`, `05-cv-templates.md`, and `CLAUDE.md`'s verification checklist now carry
  `-enc UTF-8`, which is deterministic on both poppler and Xpdf. Pinned by
  `tests/test_latex_guidance.py`.

- **`jobbank-search` search output now carries the `/scrape` contract's `date` field** (#342) -
  the CLI emitted `posted` (full ISO 8601) but not the cross-portal `date` key, the one Step 2
  contract field it was missing. Search results now additively emit `date` as `YYYY-MM-DD`
  derived from `posted` (kept unchanged), `null` when the feed item carries no `pubDate`. The
  result mapping is extracted into an exported `normalizeSearchItem` so the derivation is
  pinned by tests. Completes the portal-contract series with #339 (jobnet) and #340
  (jobdanmark).

- **`jobdanmark-search` search output now carries the `/scrape` contract fields** - the CLI
  exposed the API-native schema (`companyName`, `publishedDate` in `DD-MM-YYYY`, …) with no
  `company`, `location`, `date` or `deadline`, so every `/scrape` run flagged jobdanmark as
  degraded and the `seen_jobs.json` dedupe lost the company. Search results now additively emit
  `company`, `location` (city after the postal code in `companyAddress`), and `date`/`deadline`
  in the `YYYY-MM-DD` convention, with null-safe handling of a missing address.

- **`jobnet-search` search output now carries the `/scrape` contract fields** - the CLI emitted
  the raw Jobnet API schema (`jobAdId`, `hiringOrgName`, `publicationDate`, …) with no
  `company`, `location`, `date` or `url`, so every `/scrape` run flagged jobnet as degraded
  forever (CI stayed green), the `seen_jobs.json` dedupe fell back to company+title, and `/rank`
  lost the posting link. Search results now additively emit `company`, `location`, `date`,
  `deadline` and `url` (`https://jobnet.dk/find-job/{jobAdId}` - the `/job/` route is
  login-walled); the API's `1900-01-01` "deadline not disclosed" sentinel maps to `null`.

- **A `/` in a company or role name no longer nests the application archive one level too deep**
  (jakob1379/ai-job-search#22). `Novo Nordisk A/S` derived
  `documents/applications/novo_nordisk_a/s_data_scientist/` - written and found by every command
  that derives the path, silently skipped by the two that enumerate it, so the application never
  appeared in `/html-report`'s dashboard and `/setup`'s calibration never learned from it. The
  **Subfolder naming** rule in `documents/README.md` now drops every character that is not a
  letter, digit or underscore (collapsing underscore runs, trimming the ends), and the derivation
  sites - `/apply`, `/outcome`, the direct application skill, `/gmail-sync`, `/interview`, and
  `/notion-sync` - cite that rule instead of paraphrasing it. An all-punctuation value that derives
  to an empty name now stops for user correction instead of writing into the archive root. The
  application assistant's `framework_version` moves 1.3.3 → 1.3.4. **Already-nested archives are
  not migrated**: an archive written under the old rule stays where it is until the user moves it;
  only newly derived names change. Thanks @jakob1379 for the report.

- **The `/html-report` dashboard now reads and renders the tracker's `deadline`** (follow-up to
  #319). The tracker gained a fourteenth `deadline` column and every other consumer (`/outcome`,
  `/upskill`, `/notion-sync`) was updated to know it, but the dashboard's Step 1 field
  enumeration and Step 3 table columns still listed the original thirteen - the one surface
  where the column could not be seen at all, so a `drafted` application's clock stayed invisible
  in the report that reviews the pipeline end to end. The Step 1 enumeration now matches the
  canonical 14-column header and the applications table can show a `Deadline` column, subject to
  the existing empty-column rule. Pinned by `tests/test_html_report_command.py` so a future
  column addition cannot silently vanish from the dashboard again.

- **Application deadlines are written down at every moment the framework provably holds them**
  (#319). `/scrape` fetched the deadline and rendered it in a table, `/rank` turned it into the 🔥
  urgency marker and the expiry check, and nothing stored it - so the marker fired exactly once,
  every later run had to re-fetch a posting that might have expired to recover the date, and a
  `drafted` application (whose only applicable clock is its deadline) had no time-based signal at
  all. `seen_jobs.json` entries now carry a `deadline` (base field, written on first sight,
  refreshed by `/rank` Step 4, `null` vs missing distinguished and never guessed); `/rank` Step 3
  re-derives urgency from the stored value with no re-fetch and sweeps already-ranked entries past
  their deadline into `expired`; the tracker gains a fourteenth `deadline` column appended last,
  with a header-line-only migration for existing trackers; `/apply` Step 0 extracts the deadline
  and Step 6b writes it (including the `/scrape` path via the assistant SKILL.md); `/outcome`
  surfaces it on open rows and flags near/passed deadlines on `drafted` rows without changing the
  no-follow-up rule; and the row-rewriting paths (`/outcome` Step 4, `/gmail-sync` Step 7a) now
  preserve every unparsed field so the new column survives the first status update. `/notion-sync`
  names the tracker as the Deadline source (tracker wins), `/upskill`'s column list stays true, and
  `job-application-assistant/SKILL.md` bumps `framework_version` 1.3.2 → 1.3.3. Pinned by
  `tests/test_rank_command.py`, `tests/test_apply_records_application.py`, and
  `tests/test_upskill_skill.py`.

  The sweep's edges are stated rather than left to the reader: an entry with no stored `deadline`
  is left alone and never inferred from another field (the majority case, since most entries
  predate the column), `--all` re-scores any status including `expired` so a swept job is
  recoverable, and `/rank` Step 4's idempotency rule now names the sweep as its deliberate
  exception instead of contradicting it. Step 5 reports how many entries were swept and how many
  were retired, so an automated status change is never silent. `/outcome` Step 1 states that the
  header append is the one edit it may make outside a matched row, so it does not read as a
  violation of Step 4's own "never restructure the CSV". `/notion-sync` forbids reconciling two
  disagreeing deadlines by taking the earlier or later of them.

- **`convert_salary_excel.py` no longer misreads whole-thousands cells from a Danish-locale
  export** - a cell like `60.000` (thousands separator, no decimal comma) was handed to
  `float()` and silently written as `60.0`, a 1000x-wrong salary in `salary_data.json` that
  then rendered with a meaningless `vs baseline` percentage in `/apply`. The comma-side
  mirror (`1,234`) was already guarded as ambiguous and skipped; the dot side had no guard,
  and tests only pinned the both-separators form (`1.234,5`). `\d+\.\d{3}` is now rejected
  the same way, so the shared never-guess policy applies to both separators and the rows in
  between (e.g. `60.000,50`, `108,5`) keep parsing exactly as before. Pinned by
  `tests/test_convert_salary_excel.py`.

- **`main_example.tex` compiles on apt-packaged moderncv** (#242) - the banking template
  set its name styling through `\firstnamestyle`/`\lastnamestyle`, which moderncv 2.3.1
  (Debian/Ubuntu apt) does not have, so a fresh fork could not compile its own example CV
  on that toolchain. Name styling now routes through `\namefont`, the hook every name-style
  macro shares: live on every version (on 2.4+, head iii's `\firstnamestyle`/`\lastnamestyle`
  both route through `\namefont`, so the override is what sets the 34pt name there too), and
  the only option on 2.3.1 where those macros do not exist. Two review follow-ups landed in the
  same change: the `\hypersetup` comment now names the real clash mechanism
  (`\RequirePackage[unicode]{hyperref}` on < 2.4; `\PassOptionsToPackage`, introduced in
  2.4.0, is what removes the clash), and the metadata block sets `pdfpagemode=UseNone` - a
  `FullScreen` value there would win over the class's own `\AtEndPreamble` default and make
  every CV open in fullscreen presentation mode. `05-cv-templates.md`'s preamble copy stays
  in lockstep (framework_version 1.4.0 -> 1.4.1). Verified on moderncv 2.5.1: exit 0,
  exactly 2 pages, rendering unchanged.

## [1.5.0] - 2026-08-12

### Added

- **Commit-level upstream triage for forks** (#305). A new `tools/upstream_triage.py` walks the
  commits a fork is behind upstream and sorts them into "worth reviewing" vs "probably skip":
  cherry-picks already applied drop off on their own (matched by `git patch-id`, so ported work
  needs no bookkeeping), commits that only touch files the fork removed are set aside, and SHAs in
  a flat `.github/upstream-wontport.txt` stop resurfacing. It's the commit-history companion to
  `check_upstream_updates.py`'s version stamps - the two cross-reference each other in their output.
  Report-only by design: it prints ready-to-run `git cherry-pick` lines but never merges, pushes, or
  opens a PR, because on a fork "applies cleanly" isn't "correct". A `.github/workflows/upstream-watch.yml`
  runs it weekly into a rolling issue, guarded to no-op on the upstream template (pinned by a test) and
  scoped to the built-in `GITHUB_TOKEN` so it can never write outside its own fork. SETUP.md 8
  introduces both tools side by side. Offline tests cover patch-id matching, relevance filtering, the
  won't-port list, and the workflow guard. Thanks @anjolok1997.

- **`security_guards.py` now holds `.claude/settings.json` hooks to an allowlist** - the
  guard read `permissions.allow` and nothing else, so a `hooks` block in the same file
  passed silently. A hook is strictly more dangerous than a pre-approved permission: a
  permission pre-approves something Claude *may* choose to do, while a hook runs
  unconditionally when its event fires, with no prompt and no model decision in between.
  This is not hypothetical - it is the vector the Shai-Hulud worm used in its August 2026
  wave, planting a `SessionStart` hook in `.claude/settings.json` that executed on session
  start ([JFrog research](https://research.jfrog.com/post/shai-hulud-is-back-august/)).
  For a template thousands of people are invited to fork, that is the riskiest key in the
  file the guard already parses. `ALLOWED_HOOKS` ships empty (the template has no hooks),
  the check runs *before* the permissions shape guards so a malformed permissions block
  cannot return early and skip it, and unrecognised hook layouts fail closed rather than
  being skipped. Eight new `HookGuardTests` cases; 14 of the suite's 26 tests fail against
  the unpatched guard.

### Changed

- **`/add-portal` now specifies how a generated skill handles an API token** (#304) - the command
  could already scaffold a skill for a portal reachable only through a paid fetching
  service, but said nothing about the credential such a skill needs. It now checks for that
  case during reconnaissance and raises the per-call cost with the user *before*
  scaffolding. That check is explicitly subordinate to the `robots.txt`/terms decision
  in Step 2.4 - a paid fetching service never launders a refusal, and the credential
  path exists only for portals whose `robots.txt` permits access but whose bot
  protection blocks ordinary fetches. The portal-skill contract requires the token to come from a
  `<SERVICE>_API_TOKEN` environment variable (never a CLI flag, never a fixture) and to
  fail with `MISSING_CREDENTIALS` when unset; and such a skill's `SKILL.md` must carry a
  Setup section naming the service, the variable, and the billing. Spec only - no shipped
  portal needs a credential, so no existing skill changes. Thanks @Haseeb-1698.

- **`/add-portal`'s fetching contract line now states the honest-UA posture** - it read
  "browser User-Agent", predating the repo-wide shift to honest self-identification
  (#283, #277 and the portal-CLI fixes that followed). A generated skill now defaults to
  `Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; <portal>-cli/1.0)` - the convention every shipped portal CLI
  follows - and escalation to browser headers goes through the robots.txt gate in
  `09-web-research.md`, never the CLI's default.

- **CI discovers portal CLIs instead of hardcoding them** (#310). The `cli-checks` matrix
  is now emitted by a `discover-clis` job that finds every `.agents/skills/*/cli/package.json`,
  so a portal skill added with `/add-portal` gets its `typecheck` and `test` scripts run by CI
  automatically - on this repo and on any fork - without editing the workflow. Upstream
  coverage is unchanged (the discovered list on `master` is exactly the six shipped portals).
  `/add-portal`'s Register step now says so. Thanks @ayobamiseun.

### Fixed

- **`/upskill` reports are now gitignored at the path the skill actually writes them to.**
  The ignore rule `upskill/*.md` is rooted (a middle slash anchors a gitignore pattern to the
  repo root), but `/upskill` is a *skill*, and skills resolve bare relative paths against
  their own directory - the same observed behavior the `**/job_scraper/*` rules exist for.
  A report written to `.claude/skills/upskill/upskill/report-*.md` was therefore not ignored
  (`git check-ignore` confirms it on the unpatched tree), and an upskill report is the
  candidate's skill gaps and weaknesses measured against named employers - among the most
  sensitive files the workflow generates. The obvious widening, `**/upskill/*.md`, would have
  ignored the template's own `.claude/skills/upskill/SKILL.md` (the skill directory shares
  the name), so the new rule pins the report-file prefix instead: `**/upskill/report-*.md`.
  Added to `.gitignore` and `security_guards.py`'s `REQUIRED_IGNORE_RULES`, with a
  `check-ignore`-based test pinning both properties - reports ignored at both depths,
  `SKILL.md` still tracked - which presence checks alone cannot see.

- **Dropped the phantom `evaluated` value from `seen_jobs.json`'s status vocabulary** (#315).
  The schema block in the job-scraper skill documented `new/skipped/evaluated/ranked/expired`,
  but `evaluated` has had no writer and no reader since the initial release - `new`/`skipped`
  come from `/scrape`, `ranked`/`expired` from `/rank`, and nothing ever set or selected
  `evaluated`. Post-#269 the tracker owns all lifecycle state after drafting, so the value had
  no future role either; it is now removed rather than wired up. `/rank` Step 1's `--all`
  wording ("all non-applied entries") leaned on an `applied` status the schema deliberately
  lacks and now names what it means: entries of any status, minus the tracker exclusion set.
  Forks that wrote their own tooling against the documented vocabulary should note the value
  was never produced by any shipped command.

- **`/apply` archives the job posting while it still holds it** (#306). `/apply` drafted two
  documents and a tracker row from the full posting, then let the text die with the session;
  `/outcome` Step 3.2 tried to recover it by re-fetching a `source` URL the spec itself expects
  to be dead, and a posting pasted from an email or a PDF had no `source` to re-fetch at all.
  Step 6b item 7 now writes the posting verbatim to
  `documents/applications/<company>_<role>/job_posting.md`, never a re-fetch or a
  reconstruction from memory; an existing file is left alone (a re-application to the same
  company and role keeps the earlier posting) and named in the report. Step 0 and the `/scrape`
  path (`job-application-assistant` SKILL.md Step 1) retain the full posting text, not a
  summary. Pinned by `tests/test_apply_records_application.py`.

- **Tracker status enum defined once; `offer declined`/`no response` now reach the correct
  `/html-report` bucket and `/gmail-sync` correctly marks them final** (#298). The tracker
  CSV `status` column had no single authoritative definition. Six command files restated it
  independently with inconsistent spellings, producing two concrete bugs:

  - `/outcome` Step 4 wrote `no response` and `offer declined` (with spaces). `/html-report`
    Step 1 normalised only `no_response` / `offer_declined` (underscores), so any row written
    with spaces matched no bucket and was silently dropped from the rejection-rate denominator.
  - `/gmail-sync` Step 2 defined the "final" set with the space forms, so a row written with
    underscores was never recognised as final and the sync kept chasing closed applications.
  - `/html-report` included `interview_only` in the tracker bucket map; that value belongs to
    the archive `outcome.md` `Status:` field, not the CSV `status` column.

  Fix: a `## Tracker status vocabulary` block in `/outcome` (the only writer of the CSV)
  now defines the canonical set once with underscore spellings and the **Final** set by
  explicit list — everything else, `drafted` included, is **Open**. The legacy space
  spellings are the same values, not separate statuses: equally **Final**, and every rule
  that names one form applies to the other — readers must accept them on read, and never
  write them. Every reader that makes final/open decisions references that block (`/apply`
  Step 6b, `/interview` Step 0, `/gmail-sync` Step 2, `/html-report` Step 1, `/notion-sync`
  Steps 3-4). `/outcome` Step 4 writes `no_response` / `offer_declined`; `/notion-sync`
  normalises both forms to the canonical spellings before setting the Status property;
  `/html-report`'s bucket map loses `interview_only`, keeps both spellings, and gains a
  case-insensitive catch-all that maps unrecognised values to **Rejected/Closed** and names
  them once in the status breakdown. Pinned by `tests/test_tracker_status_vocab.py`.

  **Fork heads-up:** if your personalized `/outcome` adds `no response` or `offer declined`
  (space forms) to the tracker write path, swap them for the underscore forms. Existing rows
  keep working because every reader now accepts both spellings on read. If your Notion
  database already carries space-form Status options, they simply go unused — Notion never
  auto-removes select options.

## [1.4.0] - 2026-08-07

### Added

- **`--jobage-minutes` on linkedin-search for sub-day freshness windows** (#302) - LinkedIn
  filters its `f_TPR` parameter server-side at second granularity, so the CLI can now ask
  for postings from the last N minutes instead of whole-day windows only. Conflicts with
  `--jobage` are rejected explicitly (`CONFLICTING_AGE_FLAGS`). Useful for early-applicant
  freshness on high-volume searches; URL construction only, no parsing change.

- **README: video walkthrough link in Quick start** - The Next New Thing's hands-on
  walkthrough of the workflow (recorded August 2026), for newcomers who want to see the
  setup-to-application flow before reading. Docs only.

- **Spec-pinning tests for the Language Gate's `/rank` contract** (#278) - four regression
  guards in `tests/test_rank_command.py` pinning the `language_gate`/`language_note` fields
  through Steps 2-5 of `/rank`, including the Step 4 persistence rule that was live-debugged
  during #275 (vetoes reported in console output but `language_gate: null` on every persisted
  entry). Mirrors the existing `gaps`/`strengths` pinning pattern. No behavior change.

- **The jobnet and jobdanmark CLIs identify themselves on every API request** (#283) - their
  `apiFetch`/`apiPost` wrappers now send an explicit `User-Agent` (`jobnet-cli/1.0`,
  `jobdanmark-cli/1.0`) instead of Bun's anonymous default token, matching the honest
  self-identification jobindex already uses on `htmlFetch`. The new `user-agent.test.ts`
  suites assert the header on every request wrapper. No response behavior observed to
  change.

### Changed

- **The four Danish demo portals now ship disabled** (#288) - `jobindex-search`,
  `jobbank-search`, `jobdanmark-search`, and `jobnet-search` default to `enabled: false`,
  and `/setup`'s job-portals question now acts on the answer: it flips them to
  `enabled: true` when your market is Denmark, and leaves them off otherwise. Previously a
  non-Danish user's `/scrape` ran all four Danish boards by default, spending tokens
  fetching and filtering irrelevant listings. **Fork heads-up:** if you search the Danish
  market, set `enabled: true` in those four `SKILL.md` files after updating (or re-run
  `/setup --section search`); forks that already curated their portal set are unaffected.

### Fixed

- **The linkedin-search CLI identifies honestly** - its `User-Agent` was a full Chrome
  browser string, the last portal CLI still spoofing after #283 and the jobbank/jobdanmark
  fix. It now sends `Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; linkedin-search-cli/1.0)`, the same token
  format as every other portal. Verified live on both the search and detail endpoints:
  identical 200 responses with full content under the honest token.

- **A `.env` was committable** (`.gitignore`, `tools/security_guards.py`). `/add-portal`
  can generate a skill for a portal that only returns usable content through a paid
  fetching service, and such a skill reads an API token from the environment - but
  nothing stopped the `.env` holding that token from being committed. No shipped portal
  needs a credential, so upstream never hit this; a fork whose generated portals do hit
  it immediately. `.env` and `.env.*` are now ignored and pinned in
  `REQUIRED_IGNORE_RULES`, so the guard fails if the rule is ever dropped.

- **The robots gate did not fail closed** (`tools/robots_check.py`, #277). Found by an
  adversarial review run over the merged file, not by inspection. Both cases are pinned
  in `tests/test_robots_check.py` as FAIL-OPEN REGRESSIONs:

  - **A soft `200` granted permission.** A host answering `/robots.txt` with an HTML
    error page at status 200 produces a body that parses to zero rules, and zero rules
    read as "allowed" - so the browser-header retry ran on permission that was never
    given. A non-empty body carrying no recognised directive is now treated as
    unreadable. A genuinely empty file stays allow-all, per RFC 9309.
  - **`Disallow` patterns were never percent-decoded** while the request path was, so
    `Disallow: /foo%20bar` never matched `/foo bar` and the rule was silently skipped -
    a fail-open on any site that encodes its own rules.

- **`curl` argument hardening** (`tools/robots_check.py`). The curl argv had no `--`
  terminator before the URL. `gate()` rebuilds the target as `scheme://host/robots.txt`
  before calling `_fetch`, so the gate path was never exposed; this is hardening for
  direct callers, with a test pinning the terminator, that a dash-leading argument fails
  closed end to end, and that `gate()` never passes a caller-supplied URL through to
  curl. `--max-redirs 5` is set explicitly rather than left to curl's default.

- **Negative and fractional filter flags are rejected in the Danish portal CLIs** (#281) -
  `--jobage` (jobindex), `--radius` (jobnet), `--category`/`--jobtitle-id` (jobdanmark), and
  `--company` (jobbank) now validate as positive integers, completing the `page`/`limit`/
  `per-page` tightening from #191. Some portals silently ignore invalid filter values and
  return unfiltered results, so a mistyped ID produced wrong results instead of an error.
- **The upstream checker reports files missing from the upstream ref instead of a silent
  `[OK]`** (#282) - if upstream renames or deletes a tracked framework file, a fork's
  `check_upstream_updates.py` now lists it under a `[WARNING]` summary instead of skipping
  it and printing a false all-clear.
- **`09-web-research.md` is now tracked by the upstream checker** - the file shipped in
  #277 but was never added to `FRAMEWORK_FILES`, so forks got no signal when it changed.
- **jobbank and jobdanmark CLIs identify honestly** - jobbank's `User-Agent` was a full
  Chrome browser string and jobdanmark's detail command sent a bare `Mozilla/5.0`; both now
  use the `Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; <portal>-cli/1.0)` token the other portal CLIs use,
  matching the identification posture settled in #277. Verified live: both portals serve
  identical responses to the honest token.

- **A `WebFetch` 403 is no longer treated as a dead posting** - `WebFetch` sends a bot user
  agent, and many bank and corporate sites answer it with HTTP 403 while serving the same
  page to a browser normally. Every command read that as "page unavailable" and degraded
  silently instead of failing loudly: `/rank` marked live postings `expired`, `/apply` fell
  back to search-result snippets or to vague cover-letter prose, and `/scrape` stored
  listing-page `#fragment` URLs that fetch fine but return unrelated jobs, breaking every
  later run on that entry. New `09-web-research.md` (`framework_version` 1.0.0) is 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 snippet is a lead rather than a source. Wired into
  `/apply`, `/rank`, `/interview`, `/outcome`, `/notion-sync`, the job-scraper skill, and
  writing-style rule 5 (`03-writing-style.md` 1.1.0 to 1.2.0).

  **The retry is gated on `robots.txt`.** `WebFetch` identifies itself as `Claude-User`
  and honors `robots.txt`, so a 403 means either a WAF default on a site whose published
  policy allows access, or a site that has actually declined. New `tools/robots_check.py`
  tells them apart and the escalation runs it before retrying: a disallow for `*` or
  `Claude-User` skips the retry entirely and goes straight to finding the employer's own
  posting. The rule is stated in the file 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 are pinned by
  `tests/test_robots_check.py` (15 offline cases): the WAF usually blocks `robots.txt`
  itself, so the policy is read as a browser when the honest request is refused and then
  obeyed strictly; and `urllib.robotparser` cannot be used, because it ends a record at a
  blank line and matches in file order, which reads a real-world policy as
  "everything allowed".

- **`/apply` now records the application in the tracker** - the flagship command wrote a CV
  and a cover letter to disk and then wrote nothing to `job_search_tracker.csv`, so a drafted
  and submitted application was invisible to `/gmail-sync`, `/html-report`, `/notion-sync`,
  `/interview`, `/upskill` aggregate mode, and to `/rank`'s dedup exclusion - and the safety
  net that would have caught it (`/gmail-sync`) refuses to create missing rows, so nothing
  detected the loss. A new Step 6b appends a `drafted` row carrying the two document paths,
  the fit rating and the posting URL, reusing `/outcome`'s exact header so the two commands
  cannot diverge; re-running `/apply` updates that row rather than duplicating it, unless every
  matching row holds a final status, in which case a second application to the same role gets
  its own row. The same
  step is mirrored into `job-application-assistant` because `/scrape` Step 5 routes straight
  into the skill (`framework_version` 1.2.0 -> 1.3.0), and `/scrape` Step 6 now defers to it
  instead of adding a row of its own. `seen_jobs.json` is deliberately left alone. **Forks:**
  the bump means `check_upstream_updates.py` will flag the skill - reconcile the new Step 3b
  (and Step 6b in `apply.md`) into your personalized copies rather than skipping the flag.

  **`drafted` is introduced into the tracker status vocabulary**, and every reader that
  meant *submitted* now says so. These readers define "open" by exclusion from the final
  statuses, so a new non-final value would otherwise have joined all of them silently:
  `/outcome`'s follow-up branch no longer drafts a chase email for an application that was
  never sent, `/gmail-sync` no longer reports unsent drafts as stale, `/notion-sync` leaves
  "Applied on" empty for them and says "not yet submitted" in the page body rather than
  calling drafts submitted documents, and `/html-report` gains a sixth **Drafted** bucket
  kept out of the funnel, the rejection rate and the headline count. `/outcome` Step 4
  overwrites `date` with the submission date when a row leaves `drafted`, so the column
  keeps meaning "applied on".

  **`/gmail-sync` deliberately keeps searching for drafted rows.** `/apply` drafts but the
  user submits, and forgetting to run `/outcome` afterwards is the failure this issue is
  about. An employer reply arriving against a row still marked `drafted` is how that gets
  caught, so those rows stay in the search set, the application acknowledgement is promoted
  from noise to a `drafted` -> `applied` signal (it is the one email that proves a hand
  submission, and it arrives within a day of it), and an approved match corrects the `date`
  as well as the status. Only the staleness check skips them, since nothing was sent. (#269)

## [1.3.0] - 2026-08-03

### Added

- **Language Gate** - no dimension or gate anywhere in the framework checked a posting's
  language requirements against what the candidate actually speaks (not a Scoring Dimension,
  not a `/scrape`/`/rank` field, nothing for `/apply`'s existing generic language detection
  to report to). Adds that check, structured like the existing Eligibility Gate, on a new
  structured `Languages` table in CLAUDE.md / `01-candidate-profile.md` (`/setup` asks, or
  infers it from a CV/LinkedIn export): a posting requiring a language you haven't declared
  at all is a hard **FAIL**; one requiring a higher level than you declared in a language you
  *do* work in is **FLAG**, not an auto-reject, so borderline cases (a strict "fluent" bar vs.
  your own B1/B2) get your judgment instead of a silent drop; a requirement at or below your
  declared level is a clean **PASS**. Wired through `/scrape`, `/rank`, and `/apply`, with
  `language_gate`/`language_note` persisted into `seen_jobs.json` alongside the existing
  `location` veto so a re-read of the file (or a future debugging session) can recover why a
  job did or didn't make the shortlist.

### Fixed

- **CV date fields now use ASCII hyphens, so the PDF text layer extracts cleanly** - the
  stock template wrote date ranges as `[YYYY--YYYY]`, and on the repo's mandated `lualatex`
  toolchain the `--` en-dash ligature extracts from the PDF as U+FFFD (`�`). The stock
  template therefore failed the ATS checklist's own "no `�` replacement characters" item on
  *every* date field, and did so silently: the rendered page looks correct, and no existing
  check inspected the extracted text. `cv/main_example.tex` now uses `[YYYY-YYYY]` and
  `[YYYY-Present]`, and `05-cv-templates.md` documents the failure mode and the check that
  catches it (`framework_version` 1.3.0 to 1.4.0). The two-page layout budget is unaffected.

  **Fork reconciliation note.** The five changed lines in `cv/main_example.tex` are the
  `\cventry` date fields - three under Professional Experience, two under Education -
  precisely the lines every fork personalizes. Rebasing forks should expect conflicts there,
  resolve them in favour of *their own* dates, and then apply the same `--` to `-` change by
  hand. To find remaining instances across your own CV variants:

  ```
  grep -rn '\\cventry{[^}]*--' cv/
  ```

  Verify afterwards by extracting the text layer and checking the date lines specifically:
  `pdftotext -layout <file>.pdf - | grep '�'` - none of the hits may be a date field. (On
  the stock template two benign hits remain either way: the decorative separators on the
  contact and award lines, which are unrelated to dates and predate this fix.)

- `tools/convert_salary_excel.py` now parses localized numeric string cells - Excel
  exports that store numbers as text (a Danish `"108,5"`, `"1.234,5"`, or space-separated
  thousands) previously hit `float()`'s `ValueError` and were silently dropped from
  `salary_data.json`. The ambiguous single-comma-plus-three-digits pattern (`"1,234"`,
  thousands in one locale and a decimal in another) is deliberately skipped rather than
  guessed, preserving the old safe behaviour for the one case that cannot be
  disambiguated. (#272)
- `tools/check_upstream_updates.py` compares the template-repo slug case-insensitively -
  GitHub serves repository paths case-insensitively, so a clone made from a lowercased
  URL was a legitimate direct clone that nonetheless triggered #265's fork-vs-self
  warning. (#273)

### Changed

- SETUP.md section 8 now shows the first-time `git remote add upstream ...` command
  before telling you to `git fetch upstream`, which previously failed on any clone of a
  personal fork with no explanation of the missing remote. (#274)

### Security & privacy

- **The gitignore guard now covers every personal-output rule** - `security_guards.py`
  additionally requires the ignore rules for Gmail sync state (`gmail_sync/`), generated
  dashboards (`reports/`), upskill reports (`upskill/*.md`), Notion sync state
  (`**/job_scraper/notion_sync.json`), pasted postings (`documents/postings/**`), scraper
  markdown output (`**/job_scraper/*.md`), and behavioral-report / LinkedIn-profile PDFs.
  With these, every `.gitignore` rule outside the guard's required list is build tooling
  noise, so any future weakening of the personal-data boundary fails CI. All rules were
  already present in `.gitignore`; the guard now enforces the full set. (#271)

## [1.2.0] - 2026-08-01

### Added

- **`/rank` now persists `strengths` and `gaps` into `seen_jobs.json`** - Step 2's scoring
  agents already produced both arrays per job; Step 4 previously kept only `rank_score`,
  `rank_verdict`, and `rank_date`, so the honest per-posting findings were printed once in
  Step 5 and then discarded. Both arrays are now stored verbatim and replaced (never
  accumulated) on `--all` re-ranks, so downstream consumers of `seen_jobs.json` can read
  real triage findings instead of re-deriving them. See
  [discussion #258](https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/discussions/258).
- **`/upskill` aggregate mode now ingests `/rank`'s recorded gaps** - previously it only
  read `job_search_tracker.csv` and *guessed* required skills from the `role`/`sector`/
  `notes` columns, even though `/rank` had already fetched and scored postings that never
  made it into the tracker. Aggregate mode now also reads ranked entries
  (`rank_score >= 45`) from `job_scraper/seen_jobs.json`, dedupes them against tracker rows
  on case-insensitive company+role, and prefers a job's recorded `gaps` over an inferred
  skill list wherever both exist. The heatmap's Gap Source column now shows the
  recorded-vs-inferred split per skill, and the report header states how many jobs came
  from each source. Depends on #263 (`/rank` persisting `gaps`/`strengths`); see
  [discussion #258](https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/discussions/258).

### Security & privacy

- **SETUP.md no longer calls a fork "private working space"** - forks of public GitHub
  repositories are always public, so that wording invited exactly the personal-data
  exposure it seemed to rule out. Section 8 now states the fork-is-public fact plainly and
  documents the safe alternative (a private repository with this repo as `upstream`), and
  `/setup` ends with a matching privacy note the moment profile data first lands in
  tracked files. Prompted by
  [discussion #266](https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/discussions/266).
- **The gitignore guard now covers two more personal-data rules** - `security_guards.py`
  requires `cover_letters/Cover_*.*` (the uppercase cover-letter naming variant `/apply`
  recognizes) and `cv/*.txt` (ATS text extractions of tailored CVs) in `.gitignore`, so a
  future change weakening either rule fails CI instead of silently making personal files
  trackable. Both rules were already present in `.gitignore`; only the guard lagged.

### Fixed

- `tools/check_upstream_updates.py` no longer reports a false "up to date with upstream"
  when it silently falls back to a fork's own `origin` remote - the default state of a
  plain fork clone, where the script compared the fork against itself and could never
  detect upstream updates. It now warns that the fallback remote is not the template repo,
  shows the `git remote add upstream` command to fix it, and names the ref it actually
  compared against. (#265)
- Removed the vestigial `cover_letters/OpenFonts/cover.cls` - an unreferenced remnant of
  the original font bundle that, since #252's class rename, ambiguously declared the same
  `cover` class as the real `cover_letters/cover.cls`.
- Added regression tests pinning #252's ragged-row bounds fix in
  `tools/convert_salary_excel.py` (dimension-less workbooks read in `read_only` mode
  yield rows shorter than the header).

### Changed

- CONTRIBUTING's "run what CI runs" list is now complete - it previously omitted
  `tools/security_guards.py` and the exact `unittest` invocation, the precise checks a
  contributor PR had already failed on. Prompted by
  [issue #262](https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/issues/262).

## [1.1.0] - 2026-07-30

### Security & privacy

- **Personalized custom-template files are now gitignored regardless of engine** - the
  ignore rules broadened from `cv/main_*.tex` to `cv/main_*.*` (and likewise for cover
  letters), so a fork using a Typst or other non-LaTeX template no longer commits
  personalized `main_<company>.typ` files to a public fork. The `*_example.tex` files stay
  tracked. If you registered a custom template before this release, check
  `git status` once after updating. (#238)
- **Dependency review is live, for forks too** - the repo's Dependency graph is now enabled,
  so the CI `dependency-review` job actually blocks PRs that introduce dependencies with
  known high-severity vulnerabilities, and the job is no longer gated to the upstream repo:
  forks get the same check, self-activating if the fork enables Dependency graph
  (it warns-and-passes otherwise). (#254)

### Added

- **freehire-search: full descriptions come back with the search** - `search` now calls
  freehire's agent search endpoint (`/api/v1/agent/jobs/search`), which serves each hit's
  complete description instead of the search index's truncated preview. A 20-role search is
  one request rather than 1 + 20 `detail` calls, and `/scrape`'s Step 2 no longer needs a
  per-hit fetch for this portal. `--description-format markdown|text|html` (default
  `markdown`) selects the rendering; `table` and `plain` output is unchanged. (#251)
- **Custom templates: any compile-to-PDF toolchain (Typst, ...)** - `/add-template` no longer
  hardcodes a `lualatex`/`xelatex`/`pdflatex` engine enum. Custom templates now declare a
  source extension and a full compile command, so Typst (`typst compile`) registers the same
  way a custom LaTeX template does. Stock CV/cover letter templates stay LaTeX,
  unchanged. (#238)
- **Application-form fields as an optional third `/apply` artifact** - when a posting's
  application form asks screening questions, `/apply` can now offer a prep sheet of
  grounded answers alongside the CV and cover letter. Opt-in; the default two-document
  output never changes. (#212)
- **Confirmed facts write back to the profile** - when `/apply` or `/interview` surfaces a
  fact the user confirms (a skill, a date, a project detail), it is written back to the
  profile files in the same turn instead of being lost with the conversation. (#211)
- **CV methodology: in-progress qualifications and tenure-vs-output** - `05-cv-templates.md`
  gains explicit rules for stating in-progress certifications/degrees honestly and for
  checking claimed tenure against visible output (`framework_version` 1.2.1 -> 1.3.0). (#210)
- **Scraper flags mass-posting and recycled-listing patterns** - `/scrape` marks postings
  that look bulk-posted or recycled so they don't eat evaluation effort. (#207)
- **Retry contract pinned in CI** - all six portal CLIs now carry 429/5xx retry-backoff
  tests covering every fetch wrapper, so a silent regression in retry behavior trips
  CI. (#246)
- **README: the extension model, documented** - new Customization subsection "Extending the
  framework: portals, templates, criteria - and borrowing from other forks": the three
  extension points, the copy-one-folder pattern for borrowing a portal skill from another
  fork with a read-the-code-first checklist, and why there is deliberately no installer
  (the manual copy is the security model). Prompted by discussion #249.

### Fixed

- `/rank` shortlist and below-threshold tables include each posting's URL. (#236)
- `convert_salary_excel.py`: count/index columns pair by category name instead of
  adjacency (#219), standalone count columns store as counts (#230), and ragged rows from
  dimension-less spreadsheets no longer crash with an IndexError (#252).
- `cover.cls`: duplicate package imports removed and the `\ProvidesClass` name fixed to
  match the filename, silencing a class-name-mismatch warning. (#252)
- Portal CLI type-checking pinned to concrete `@types/bun` / `@bunli/*` versions to stop
  environmental CI type-drift. (#226)
- `freehire-search` points at freehire.me after the service's domain migration. (#229)
- `verify_pdf.py`'s missing-poppler error now includes per-OS install hints. (#252)

## [1.0.0] - 2026-07-22

First tagged release. This marks the framework as stable and gives forks a described
checkpoint to update against instead of a moving `master`. It is a baseline of what
already exists rather than a set of new changes; subsequent releases will document
what changed since the previous tag.

At this baseline the framework provides:

- **Application workflow** - a drafter/reviewer `/apply` pipeline (CV + cover letter),
  plus `/setup`, `/scrape`, `/rank`, `/interview`, `/outcome`, `/upskill`,
  `/expand`, `/html-report`, `/gmail-sync`, `/notion-sync`, `/add-portal`,
  `/add-template`, and `/reset`.
- **Portal search skills** - country-agnostic job-board CLIs (LinkedIn, freehire, and
  the Danish boards) in the portable Agent Skills format under `.agents/skills/`,
  discovered and orchestrated by `/scrape`, with an `enabled:` toggle for skipping
  portals.
- **Framework versioning** - `framework_version` markers on methodology files plus
  `tools/check_framework_version.py` (CI guard) and `tools/check_upstream_updates.py`
  (fork-side update preview).
- **Privacy and safety guards** - `.gitignore` protection for personal data, the
  `tools/security_guards.py` allowlist for `.gitignore` negations, and a CI policy of
  making no live portal requests.
- **Cross-runtime support** - a root `AGENTS.md` pointer so Codex and Antigravity can
  discover the portable portal skills, with Claude Code as the reference runtime.

[Unreleased]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.7.1...HEAD
[1.7.1]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.7.0...v1.7.1
[1.7.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.6.0...v1.7.0
[1.6.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.5.0...v1.6.0
[1.5.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.4.0...v1.5.0
[1.4.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.3.0...v1.4.0
[1.3.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.2.0...v1.3.0
[1.2.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.1.0...v1.2.0
[1.1.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/compare/v1.0.0...v1.1.0
[1.0.0]: https://github.com/MadsLorentzen/ai-job-search/releases/tag/v1.0.0