Tracking applications#
The pipeline#
Alfred models an application as moving through nine stages:
| Stage | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Wishlist | A role you want but haven't applied to |
| Applied | Submitted, waiting to hear back |
| Screening | Recruiter call or take-home |
| Technical | Coding and system design rounds |
| Onsite | The final loop |
| Offer | Negotiating |
| Accepted / Rejected / Withdrawn | Closed out |
The board shows the six live stages; closed applications move to the list view. Drag a card to move it, or use the stage picker on the application page.
Dragging an application from Applied into Screening. The move is logged on the timeline.
Alfred backfills the application date. The first time a card reaches a stage
that implies you actually applied, appliedAt is set to that moment if it wasn't
already — so the funnel and the "applications sent" chart stay honest even if you
added the role late.
Adding an application#
Add application → Paste a posting, drop in the whole thing, and press Extract fields. Alfred pulls out the company, title, location, work mode, seniority, salary range and a cleaned-up description — dropping the EEO boilerplate, benefits lists and "about us" marketing.
Anything the posting doesn't state is left empty rather than guessed.
Add application → Details. Only company and title are required.
The job description matters more than any other field. Without it, analysis and prep fall back to reasoning from the title alone, and Alfred will say so.
Closing an application#
Picking Rejected, I withdrew or Offer accepted — from the stage picker or the Close button — opens one dialog rather than silently moving the card, because closing is three decisions at once.
What they said. A rejection is the only moment a company tells you anything true about your application, and the moment the email arrives is the only moment you will ever bother writing it down. It is kept separate from your own notes and shown on the application under What they said — four of them side by side will tell you something no single one does.
The follow-up is cleared. Chasing a company that has already said no is the most embarrassing thing this app could cause.
The prep can go with it. Closing offers to clear the open prep items for that job in the same action. This is the real reason people avoid closing things: dead work keeps turning up in the queue, so they leave the application open and every number in the app drifts.
Cleared means skipped, not deleted
Cleared items leave your prep queue and the dashboard but stay on the record. That is deliberate — it is how you notice that the fourth company in a row wanted system design.
The timeline#
Every application has a timeline recording what happened and when:
- stage changes, with the transition
- notes you add
- emails linked from the inbox
- every AI run — the fit score, the prep plan, the questionnaire
This is what makes the funnel meaningful. A conversion funnel built from current stage alone would under-count everything that was later rejected; Alfred reads the stage-change history instead, so an application that reached onsite and was then turned down still counts toward onsite.
Follow-ups#
Set a next action date and label on an application and it appears in Needs a nudge on the dashboard once the date has passed, and as a red deadline on the card.
When you never set one#
The application nobody scheduled anything for is the one that gets lost, and "Needs a nudge" cannot help with it — it needs a date to already exist.
So the dashboard also has Going quiet: applications with nothing scheduled where nothing has actually happened for over ten days. Each row carries a Chase in 3d button that sets the follow-up in one click, because the point is to make the fix cheaper than the guilt.
"Nothing has happened" is read from the timeline, not from when the row was last edited — a stage change, an email or an interview counts; a note you wrote or a prep item you ticked does not. Otherwise jotting down how worried you are about the silence would reset the silence clock.
It includes applications at technical and onsite, not only ones that never replied. Silence after an onsite is the case that costs the most and the one people are most reluctant to chase. Wishlist items are excluded: nothing has been sent, so there is nobody to chase.
Views#
- Board — drag and drop, grouped by stage.
- List — a sortable table with fit score, compensation, applied date and next action. This is also the accessible view: everything a colour conveys on the board is present as text here.
- Jobs — every job you have tracked, open and closed, archived included, searchable and sortable on any column. The board answers "what do I do next" and hides what is closed; Jobs answers "what have I got".
The dashboard opens with In play: your live applications, furthest along first, each showing how well it fits, how much prep is left and whether anything is scheduled.
Press Cmd+K (or Ctrl+K) anywhere to jump to an application by name.