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Getting Started with Recruit

Installation, initial configuration, and the local-first architecture of Recruit for macOS.

Recruit is a personal AI job-hunting assistant and career CRM. It is built as two coordinated components:

  1. recruit-mac: A native SwiftUI macOS desktop application for visual kanban boards, interactive audio recording, style editing, and database exploration.
  2. recruit: A fast Go CLI utility that enables scripting, background routine syncing, and rapid status checks directly in your shell.

Both interfaces read from and write to the same SQLite database located at ~/.recruit/recruit.db.

1. Installation

Desktop Application (.dmg)

  1. Download Recruit.dmg from the Releases portal.
  2. Open the disk image and drag Recruit into /Applications.
  3. Launch the application from Spotlight or Alfred.

Homebrew Tap

Install the CLI and GUI tools together:

zsh — brew install recruit
$ brew tap tanagersoftware/tap $ brew install recruit

2. First-Launch Setup

When you first launch Recruit:

  1. Database Initialization: Recruit creates ~/.recruit/recruit.db with full SQLite schema migrations automatically.
  2. AI Provider Configuration: Open Settings (⌘,) → AI. Enter your Google AI Studio or Anthropic API key. Credentials are encrypted and stored in your macOS Keychain (com.tanager.recruit).
  3. Resume Import: Navigate to the Profile tab and import your existing master resume (.pdf, .md, or .txt).
💡 Tip: Recruit works out of the box with the free tier of Google AI Studio (Gemini). For high-volume automated background tasks, you can optionally configure paid fallback failover in Settings.

3. Daily Workflow

A typical daily session in Recruit:

  1. Morning Briefing: Check the Dashboard for stale contacts needing follow-up and pending interviews.
  2. Listing Triage: Clip jobs using the browser extension or add listings from URLs in the Jobs tab.
  3. Pipeline Review: Drag active opportunities across stages in the Pipeline kanban board.
  4. Outreach Tailoring: Use the AI Compose sheet to draft tailored outreach that conforms strictly to your Personal Style Blueprint.

4. Documentation & Visual Guides