Last year when I was applying for jobs, my setup was a mess.
I had 10 tabs open, a spreadsheet to track applications, and multiple versions of my CV. Every time I wanted to tailor my CV for a role, I had to copy paste the job description somewhere, paste my CV somewhere else, and manually compare the two.
It worked, but it was slow and annoying. So I built a small tool to fix that.
The idea
I wanted one place where I could both track applications and tailor my CV without jumping between tabs.
The flow is simple.
You open a job in your tracker. You click “Tailor my CV for this role”. A new tab opens with your CV and the job description already there.
From there, you get suggestions. Keywords to add, bullet points to rewrite, things to remove. You pick what you want.
When you're done, the result syncs back to the original tab. You can close everything and come back later without doing the work again.
That’s it. No copy paste loop.
The tracker
The tracker is just a small column based board with four columns: Draft, Applied, Interview, Offer.
Each card has the company name, role, job description, and your notes. Enough to stop using a spreadsheet, nothing more.
I did not add drag and drop. A simple “Move to” dropdown does the job and took an hour instead of a day. That tradeoff felt right.
How the sync works
The interesting part is how the two tabs talk to each other.
When the CV tab finishes generating suggestions or when you apply changes, it writes the result to localStorage.
The tracker listens to the localStorage storage event. When it fires, the card updates automatically. No refresh, no manual reload.
It is a small thing, but it removes a lot of friction. You do the work in one tab and see the result in another instantly.
How the CV analysis works
There are two modes.
The first one is keyword matching. It runs instantly and highlights missing or weak matches between your CV and the job description.
The second one uses an AI model through your own Gemini API key. It gives more detailed suggestions like rewriting bullet points or spotting gaps.
In both cases, the output is not a full rewrite. I tried that first and dropped it. It felt like a black box and I did not trust it.
Now it gives small, specific suggestions. You pick what to apply.
PDF support
You can upload your CV as a PDF. The text is extracted directly in the browser and used for the analysis.
What I chose not to build
A few things I skipped on purpose.
A full CV rewrite, as mentioned.
Drag and drop on the board. Nice to have, not worth the time for a first version.
Anything that adds friction or setup. The goal was to make this faster than my old copy paste workflow, not more complex.
What’s next
Right now, adding a job to the tracker is still manual. You copy the job description and paste it into a card.
The next step is a browser extension.
The idea is to open a job page and click a button to send everything to the tracker. Title, company, description. No copy paste at all.
That would complete the loop.
If you want to try it
The tracker and the CV tools are available at https://sylumk.dev
If you are not job hunting, you probably know someone who is. Feel free to share it with them.
If you have feedback, I would love to hear it !