ai-job-search/.claude/commands/outcome.md

/outcome - Record the Result of an Application

You are recording what happened to a job application: progress updates (interview invitations, stages completed, offers) and final resolutions (hired, rejected, no response). The data lands in two places the framework already reads but nothing systematically writes:

• job_search_tracker.csv - the status column that /scrape and /rank use for dedup and exclusion
• documents/applications/<company>_<role>/ - the per-application archive (posting, submitted drafts, outcome.md) that /setup Path A mines to calibrate 04-job-evaluation.md and surface STAR candidates

/outcome writes the data; /setup interprets it. This command never edits the evaluation framework or profile files itself.

The command also owns the stretch before there is an outcome to record: the follow-up branch (Step 2b) surfaces open applications that have gone quiet, drafts a brief follow-up note in the user's voice, and logs it - so the chase and the resolution it eventually leads to live in one flow.

Follow these steps in order.

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Step 0: Parse Input

$ARGUMENTS may contain:

• Nothing → list open applications and ask which one to update
• A company name (optionally with a role), e.g. /outcome acme or /outcome acme ml engineer → target that application
• followup → enter the follow-up branch (Step 2b) over every quiet open application, using the default threshold of 10 days
• followup <N>, e.g. /outcome followup 14 → follow-up branch with an N-day threshold
• followup <company>, e.g. /outcome followup acme → draft a follow-up for that application now, regardless of threshold

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Step 1: Load State and Identify the Application

1. Read job_search_tracker.csv. If it does not exist, create it with the standard header:

   date,company,sector,role,role_type,channel,status,contact_person,fit_rating,notes,cv_file,cover_letter_file,source,deadline
   

   If the file exists and its header does not end in ,deadline, append ,deadline to the header line only - no data row is touched. Legacy rows then read as an empty deadline. This is the one edit to an existing tracker this command may make outside a matched row, and Step 4's "never restructure the CSV" governs that row, not this header line.

2. With an argument: match rows case-insensitively on company (and role, if given). One match → proceed. Several → list them and ask. None → the application was made outside the workflow; collect company, role, date applied, channel, and posting URL from the user and add a tracker row.

3. Without an argument: list all rows whose status is not final (see Tracker status vocabulary below) as a numbered table (company, role, date applied, current status, deadline, days quiet, follow-ups sent) and ask which to update. The two derived columns come straight from existing data: days quiet counts from the row's date or the latest dated entry in notes, whichever is more recent; follow-ups sent counts the followed up YYYY-MM-DD markers in notes. If any open row is 10+ days quiet with fewer than two follow-ups sent, add one line under the table: "Some of these have gone quiet - want a follow-up draft? (Step 2b)". If every row is resolved, say so and stop.

   drafted rows are listed but never counted as quiet - nothing was sent, so nobody is late replying. List them under their own heading ("Drafted, not yet submitted"), leave days quiet and follow-ups sent blank, and keep them out of the follow-up offer above.

   Deadline urgency is the one clock that does apply to a drafted row. Show the deadline column when the row has one and leave it blank otherwise. Mark a deadline within 7 days with 🔥 and one that has already passed with ⚠, on the same 7-day threshold /rank Step 3 uses so the two commands never disagree. A passed deadline on a drafted row is the failure this column exists to catch - documents written, never sent, and now unsendable - so name it in one line under the table rather than leaving the user to compare dates. This changes nothing about the follow-up offer: a drafted row is still never chased, because nobody is late replying to something that was never sent.

4. Derive the archive folder name: documents/applications/<company>_<role>/ - lowercase, underscores for spaces (the convention documented in documents/README.md). Check whether the folder and an outcome.md already exist - if so, you are updating, not creating.

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Tracker status vocabulary

Canonical spellings for the tracker CSV status column (underscores, never spaces):

drafted | applied | interview | offer | hired | rejected | no_response | offer_declined | withdrawn

• Final (application closed): hired, rejected, no_response, offer_declined, withdrawn
• Open: everything else, drafted included — a row is active until its status is one of the Final values.
• drafted is open but distinct — nothing was sent, so no follow-up is ever due.
• Readers must also accept the legacy space spellings no response and offer declined on read, so that existing trackers keep working without a migration. Never write them — they are the same values as no_response and offer_declined, not separate statuses, equally Final, and every rule that names one applies to the other.

Distinct from the archive Status: enum in documents/README.md (in_progress | hired | offer_declined | rejected | no_response | interview_only), which describes the per-application outcome.md file, not this column. The two enums are never written to the same field.

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Step 2: Collect What Happened

Ask the user what happened, then classify:

Progress updates (application still open):

• Interview invitation / stage scheduled or completed (phone screen, technical, case, final round)
• Offer received (not yet accepted or declined)

Resolutions (application closed) — these map to the archive Status: enum in documents/README.md that /setup parses (distinct from the tracker CSV column; see Tracker status vocabulary above):

• hired - accepted an offer
• offer_declined - received an offer, turned it down
• rejected - explicit rejection at any stage
• no_response - no reply; if the user is unsure whether to call it, note how long it has been since the last contact and let them decide - do not impose a cutoff
• interview_only - reached interviews but the process stalled or was abandoned without an explicit rejection

Also collect, without interrogating - one or two open questions are enough:

• Dates for the stages reached
• Any feedback received, verbatim where the user remembers it
• What they'd do differently, and any signal about what the company valued (these feed /setup's calibration and STAR-candidate mining, so concrete beats polished)

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Step 2b: Follow-Up Branch (chase a quiet application)

Enter this branch from the followup argument (Step 0) or from the offer under the open-pipeline table (Step 1.3). Standard practice is a brief, polite follow-up one to two weeks after applying, at most twice; this branch operationalizes that.

Candidates. An application qualifies when its status is neither final nor drafted, the threshold has passed since its date (or since the last followed up marker in notes, if any), and it has fewer than two logged follow-ups. Parse dates defensively - skip rows whose dates do not parse and say so rather than guessing. Present qualifying applications as a table (company, role, days quiet, follow-ups sent, channel, contact person) and draft only for the ones the user picks.

Threshold. The 10-day default is deliberately earlier than /gmail-sync's 30-day staleness flag (its Step 9): that check is a read-only alarm that a row has been forgotten entirely; this branch is the proactive nudge while a reply is still plausible. The two numbers serve different moments, which is why they differ.

Drafting. For each selected application:

1. Read the archive folder: the job_posting.md, cv_draft.tex, and cover_letter.tex that Step 3 maintains are the source of every claim the note may make - this is Rule 3 (never fabricate) widened to "no new claims": a follow-up that introduces skills or experience the submitted materials don't contain is a fabrication vector.
2. Apply the writing style rules from 03-writing-style.md (no cliches, no em-dashes, warm but direct), and match the application's language - draw the register from the archived cover letter.
3. Write roughly 60 to 120 words: address the contact_person from the tracker if present (otherwise the team, in the application's language); one sentence restating interest in the specific role; one concrete value-reminder drawn from the submitted materials; one polite question about the timeline. No pressure, no "just checking in" filler.
4. Shape it for the channel column: email (with a subject line reusing the application's headline), LinkedIn message (shorter, no subject), or portal message (plain text).
5. Present the draft and iterate until the user is happy.

Logging. Once the user confirms they will send it (or have sent it), log it in the same turn - an unlogged follow-up breaks the next run's quiet-days math:

• Append followed up YYYY-MM-DD to the row's notes column (Step 4's rule applies: append a dated note, never restructure the CSV).
• Save the final note as followup_YYYY-MM-DD.md in the application's archive folder. Safe by documented convention: /setup reads only the four named archive files and ignores extras (the same rule that covers /interview's prep files), and documents/applications/** is gitignored personal data.

If the user decides not to send, log nothing.

Termination. When an application hits two follow-ups and stays silent, do not offer a third. This is the moment to continue in this same command's Step 2: note how long it has been since last contact and let the user decide whether to record no_response - as ever, no imposed cutoff. And if the user mentions an actual response while in this branch (an interview invitation, a rejection), drop out of the branch and record it through the normal Step 2 flow.

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Step 3: Archive the Application Materials

Create or update documents/applications/<company>_<role>/. All content here is personal data - the folder is already gitignored (documents/applications/**), so nothing needs redacting.

1. cv_draft.tex and cover_letter.tex - copy (never move) the submitted files. Locate them via the tracker row's cv_file/cover_letter_file columns; if those are empty, look for cv/main_<company>*.tex and cover_letters/cover_<company>_*.tex. If a file already exists in the archive, leave it - the archived version is what was actually submitted. If no draft files exist (application made outside /apply), skip with a note.
2. job_posting.md - if it already exists, leave it. Otherwise try WebFetch on the tracker row's source URL and save the posting text, retrying a 403 with browser headers per .claude/skills/job-application-assistant/09-web-research.md. If the URL is dead (postings expire fast - this is exactly why the archive matters), ask the user to paste the posting, or write a stub noting the posting is unavailable. Never reconstruct a posting from memory.
3. outcome.md - write or update it in exactly the format documented in documents/README.md, so /setup Path A parses it without special cases:

# Outcome: <Company> — <Role>

**Status:** in_progress | hired | offer_declined | rejected | no_response | interview_only

**Date resolved:** YYYY-MM-DD   <- only when resolved; omit while in_progress

## Interview stages reached
- [x] Phone screen (YYYY-MM-DD)
- [ ] Technical interview
- [ ] Case interview
- [ ] Final round
- [ ] Offer received

## Notes
<feedback received, what to do differently, signals about what they valued -
appended per update with a date, never overwritten>

Update rules: tick stage checkboxes as they are reached (add the date in parentheses), append dated entries to Notes, and only change Status from in_progress to a final value on resolution. Re-running /outcome on the same application is idempotent - it appends new information, never duplicates or rewrites history.

Thank-you note trigger: when this step ticks a newly completed interview stage, offer in the same turn: "Want a short thank-you note for the interviewer? A prompt one is standard practice." If accepted, draft it under Step 2b's drafting and logging rules (same voice, same no-new-claims boundary, same followup_YYYY-MM-DD.md archive convention). Recording the stage is the trigger - no scanning for recent stages is ever needed.

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Step 4: Update the Tracker

Update the matched row's status column using the canonical spellings from Tracker status vocabulary above (e.g. drafted → applied → interview → offer → hired / rejected / no_response / offer_declined / withdrawn) and append a short dated note to the notes column. Never restructure the CSV, reorder rows, or touch other rows. The rewrite touches only the status and notes columns: preserve every other field of the row, parsed or not, so a value the row carries - the deadline written by /apply Step 6b, or any column added in the future - is never blanked by a status update.

Moving a row off drafted: rows written by /apply Step 6b carry the date the documents were drafted, not the date they were sent. Whenever this step advances such a row to any other status - applied, or straight to interview or rejected when the user reports an outcome for something they submitted without recording it - overwrite its date column with the actual submission date. The date column is read as "applied on" by /notion-sync and drives /html-report's year/season grouping and this command's own days-quiet count, so leaving the draft date in place would misreport the application.

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Step 5: Calibration Handoff

Count the outcome.md files under documents/applications/ with a final status (not in_progress).

• If 3 or more are resolved (or 2+ share a pattern - same role type rejected twice, same sector going silent), suggest:

  "You now have resolved applications on record. Run /setup (Path A) to fold them into your evaluation framework - it calibrates fit scoring from what actually got interviews, and mines your interview feedback for STAR examples."

• Do not write anything into 04-job-evaluation.md or other skill files yourself. /setup Path A owns that merge - it is read-before-write and idempotent, and duplicating its logic here would race it.

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Step 6: Confirm

Summarize what was recorded:

Outcome recorded for at .

• documents/applications/<company>_<role>/outcome.md - status: ,
• Archived: <which of cv_draft.tex / cover_letter.tex / job_posting.md were copied or fetched, and which were skipped and why>
• Tracker: status →

[Calibration suggestion from Step 5, if triggered]

If the update recorded an upcoming or newly scheduled interview stage, also suggest:

"Interview coming up? /interview <company> builds a prep pack for that stage from this application's archive - the posting, the documents you submitted, and any feedback recorded from earlier rounds."

If the recorded status is hired, congratulate the user warmly first - this is the moment the whole framework exists for. Then add this single line (once; never on re-runs for the same application, and never for any other status):

"If this framework helped you get there, consider buying it a coffee - it keeps this free for the next job-seeker out there. ☕"

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Important Rules

1. Write data, don't interpret it. The archive and tracker are the outputs; calibration belongs to /setup. This command never edits profile or framework files.
2. The archived version is the submitted version. Existing files in the application folder are never overwritten by fresher drafts.
3. Never fabricate. A dead posting URL gets a user-pasted copy or an explicit "unavailable" stub, not a reconstruction. Feedback is recorded as the user reports it.
4. Stay schema-compatible. outcome.md follows the format in documents/README.md exactly (in_progress is the one addition, for open applications); the tracker keeps its columns.
5. Idempotent updates. Re-running on the same application appends new stages and notes; it never duplicates folders, rows, or history.
6. Follow-ups: draft only, never send. The follow-up branch produces text for the user to send themselves. It never emails, messages, or submits anything, and it must not be wired to tools that do.
7. Follow-ups: no new claims. Every substantive statement in a follow-up or thank-you note comes from the archived submitted materials. Rule 3 applies with no exceptions.
8. Maximum two follow-ups per application. After the second silent follow-up, the honest move is recording the resolution, not persistence.