Frequently asked questions

CareerMate itself is free and open-source, and since it has no built-in LLM, it needs no API key. Your existing AI subscription (Claude, etc.) does the analysis and writing; CareerMate is just the local “drawer” that stores and serves your career data.

Ask the AI to “update CareerMate” to move to the latest version (or “is it up to date?” to just check). After updating, restart your AI app or the MCP connection.

Fully quit and restart your AI client (changing settings without a restart won't apply).

Claude Code asks for a one-time approval of the project server on first run — approve it. Check the connection with the client's /mcp command, or ask the AI to “check my onboarding status” and see if it responds.

Still stuck? See per-client setup in New here? or INSTALL.md.

That's expected. Those run in the cloud and can only use remote-URL MCP, while CareerMate is a local stdio server on your computer, so they can't reach it.

Use a locally-run client: Claude Desktop · Claude Code · Codex CLI.

CareerMate needs Node.js 22.5.0 or newer (it uses node:sqlite). Check with node -v and update if needed.

That address only opens while CareerMate is running. Ask the AI to “open the dashboard” and it auto-starts the server in the background, then opens your browser.

If the port is already in use, it falls back to another port automatically (pin it with CAREERMATE_PORT). If auto-start fails, check ~/.careermate/server.log.

For security the dashboard binds to 127.0.0.1 (this computer) only — it's not reachable from other devices (by design).

It auto-opens only once, during first onboarding. After that it just shows the link — open it yourself or ask the AI to “open the dashboard”. To disable auto-open, set CAREERMATE_NO_OPEN=1.

Scanned/image PDFs (no text layer) can't be extracted. If your AI can view images, show it the PDF directly; otherwise paste the text.

Password-protected PDFs can't be read — remove the password in a viewer and re-save, or paste the text. Corrupted PDFs and files over 25MB are rejected, with the reason in the message.

PDF, Word (.docx), Hancom (.hwp/.hwpx), and text (.txt/.md). Where possible, give the absolute path (e.g. C:\Users\me\Desktop\resume.pdf).

CareerMate auto-detects UTF-8 and Korean encodings (CP949/EUC-KR). If it's still garbled, re-save the file as UTF-8 or paste the content.

Paste the URL, or paste the posting text itself. CareerMate has no LLM and doesn't crawl URLs, so quality is best when you provide the posting text.

The AI does the analysis; CareerMate stores the inputs (profile, posting) and the result. You need a saved profile and posting first.

Ask the AI to “pull the application context before analyzing” to gather profile, resume, and posting in one go.

Once a posting is saved, ask the AI to prepare and save interview material. When the application status reaches “screening passed” or later, the dashboard proactively suggests interview prep as the next step.

Yes. Ask the AI to “export my resume” (or cover letter / profile) and it saves to ~/.careermate/exports as Markdown or print-ready HTML (use your browser's “Print → Save as PDF”).

You can also download them directly from the Documents and Profile pages in the dashboard.

Only on your computer, in ~/.careermate (Windows: %USERPROFILE%\.careermate). See the exact path under Settings > Data location in the dashboard. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Use Settings > Backup / Export to create a backup or export all data as JSON, and the Danger zone to reset everything (a backup is taken automatically before a reset).