Shortlist is a locally-run Mac application that matches jobs to who you actually are: YOUR values, YOUR work style, YOUR deal-breakers, not just your job title. Here's how it works.
Shortlist is designed around a simple idea: you describe yourself, and the tool gets to work. No Boolean strings. No dropdown hell.
Drop in your resume, cover letters, or anything else that reflects your work history. Coach reads them so it can ask smarter questions and build a richer profile from the start.
Have a real conversation with your AI Coach that asks what you've loved, what you'd walk away from, what kind of environment brings out your best work, and what you won't settle for. Coach listens and follows up.
Coach synthesizes everything into a structured profile written in your voice. Every section is fully editable because, as we know, AI occasionally overstates or fills gaps with plausible-sounding details that aren't exactly true. You stay in control of how you're represented.
Jobs are scored against your full profile — values, work style, deal-breakers, salary expectations, and the kinds of companies you've been excited about — and surfaced with thorough plain-language explanations for every result.
Every result comes with a score, a tier, and a plain-language breakdown of what matched, what was unknown, and what to watch out for. You'll never click into a job and realize 30 seconds in that it was never even close.
Jobs are scored 1-10 against your profile using Claude. The score reflects the whole picture, not just title matching, including location preference confirmation, salary alignment, company type, values fit, and deal-breaker detection.
Results are also weighted by ATS platform quality. Roles from Greenhouse, Lever, and Ashby get a ranking boost because those platforms tend to attract more established, intentional employers. Workday is deprioritized by default (and job seekers know why), but you can adjust this in Preferences.
9-10: Exceptional. 7-8: Strong Match. 5-6: Close Match. Weak matches are filtered out by default. The threshold is adjustable.
Beyond the automated search, you can evaluate any job you come across manually. Paste a single job link or point Shortlist at a company careers page and it will find and score every relevant role for you.
Paste any job posting URL. Shortlist fetches the listing via the ATS API (Ashby, Lever, and Greenhouse are fully supported with direct API access) and runs it through the same scoring pipeline as your automated results.
Paste a company careers page URL and Shortlist scans every open role, pre-filters by relevance to your profile, and scores the best matches. Pulls structured job data directly from Ashby, Lever, and Greenhouse APIs rather than scraping.
Manually evaluated jobs live in the My Shortlist tab and persist until you delete them. They never get swept away by a new automated search. Star any result from the Longlist to save it here too.
When you mark a role as Applied in My Shortlist, it moves to the Tracker — a kanban board that takes you all the way through the hiring process with tools for every stage.
Log each round with date, type (phone screen, panel, take-home), and interviewer profiles including name, title, LinkedIn handle, and notes. Rounds collapse automatically when you move to the Offer stage.
Enter offer details and see an automatic comparison against your stated salary floor. A Levels.fyi link for your role is generated automatically. Negotiation log and Coach quick-actions included.
When you accept an offer and mark it HIRED!, the app throws a full celebration — glow worms, confetti, the works. Then Coach opens automatically to help you prep for day one.
Every closed role has a Lessons Learned field that activates when the card is wrapped. Over time you build a personal record of what worked, what didn't, and what to carry forward.
Coach is a persistent AI assistant available throughout the app. It built your profile, it knows your preferences, and it knows exactly where you are in your search. It gives different help at different stages, and it stays out of the way when you don't need it.
Coach opens with a different greeting depending on where you are.
Applied: it offers to help with follow-up or phone screen prep.
Interviewing: interview questions, STAR stories, company research, thank you emails.
Offer: evaluation and negotiation. It never surfaces the wrong tools at the wrong time.
Coach has full context on your profile, your conversation history, your current stage, any notes you've added, and the full job description for the role you're working on. Prep is specific, not generic.
Coach is scoped to job searching and platform help only. It won't answer coding questions, medical questions, or anything outside its lane — by design.
Shortlist is a local Mac application. There is no Shortlist server. There is no account. There is no algorithm learning from your job search. Here's exactly what goes where.
Your profiles, your Coach conversation history, the documents you upload, your API keys, your Tracker data, your saved evaluations, your preferences. All of it. None of it leaves your computer through Shortlist.
Two outbound API calls during normal use: job search query strings to JSearch/RapidAPI (no personal data, just search terms), and your profile content plus job listing text to Anthropic for AI scoring. Both use your own API keys, not ours — because there is no ours.
You are describing yourself, your values, and what you won't settle for. That is personal. It belongs on your machine. You bring your own Anthropic and RapidAPI keys, you control the costs, and nothing routes through Shortlist infrastructure because there isn't any.
Shortlist runs on your Mac. You bring two API keys. A setup guide is included with your download.
Shortlist is a local Mac application. Windows support is on the roadmap. Setup takes about five minutes.
Powers Coach and all AI matching. Usage-based pricing — no subscription, you pay per use. Most job seekers spend a few dollars a month.
Powers job search results via Google Jobs data. Free tier at rapidapi.com — 100 requests per month included.