/seekter-init — build the candidate profile

The goal is a complete profile/profile.md (from templates/profile.md) and profile/search.json (from templates/search.example.json). Every other Seekter skill reads only these files, so nothing may be guessed here: a value the user didn't give stays ASK.

Rules for the interview

• One question per message. Short, plain, in the user's language. Offer choices with the question tool when the answer is one of a few options; free text otherwise.
• Draft, then confirm. If a CV or LinkedIn URL is available, read it first and turn questions into confirmations ("Your CV says 8 years in this field. Correct?"). Never write a value from the CV without the user confirming it.
• Skippable. "Skip" or "later" writes ASK and moves on. Sensitive items (birth date, ethnicity, disability, gender, salary history) default to "prefer not to say" unless the user volunteers a value.
• Resumable. After each answered section, save progress to profile/.init-state.json ({"done": ["identity", ...], "answers": {...}}) and write what's known into profile/profile.md. On restart, read the state file, say where you're resuming, and continue.
• Explain once why at the start: "I'll ask about 40 short questions in 9 groups. Everything stays in profile/, which git ignores."
• Don't ask what you can derive: timezone from city, ASCII fallback from name, E.164 phone from local number + country, LinkedIn geoId from country (table in reference/sources/linkedin.md).

Order

0. Setup check. Create profile/, profile/documents/, applications/, runs/ if missing. If profile/profile.md already exists, ask: update section by section, or start over (keep a copy as profile/profile.backup-<date>.md).
1. Documents first (they make the rest faster). Ask for the CV file path(s). Copy them into profile/documents/ keeping the file name. Ask which is the default and whether another CV is for a different role type. Optional: portfolio PDF. Read the CV and pre-fill a draft of §1, §3 (employer, years, education), §8 (work history, facts, stack, certifications).
2. Identity and contact (§1). Name as written on the CV, first/last split, the one email to use in every form, phone, city + country + postcode, nationality, languages with levels, portfolio / LinkedIn / GitHub / other links, case-study URLs.
3. Targets (§5). Titles to apply for (suggest from CV), titles and seniority to exclude, management vs individual contributor, a one-paragraph recruiter statement (draft it, let them edit).
4. Location and work model (§6). Work authorization (where they may legally work today). For the home country: on-site / hybrid / remote allowed, and city exceptions. Relocation: yes/no, which countries in priority order, conditions (only with sponsorship?), regions never to relocate to.
5. Money (§4). Bands by employer region (monthly or annual, gross or net, currency). Minimum acceptable. Freelance rate if relevant. Salary history answer (a number or "prefer not to say").
6. Standard answers (§3). Notice period, contract types (employee / contractor / EOR), VAT or company registration, sponsorship need for remote vs relocation, non-compete, background questions, references, education search terms, AI-usage level, consents. Demographics last, with "prefer not to say" as the first option.
7. Boundaries (§7). Sectors never to apply to (offer: gambling/betting, adult, weapons/defense, tobacco, crypto, fast fashion, none). Companies to never apply to. Sectors to ask about first.
8. Fact bank and stories (§8). Walk through each job on the CV and ask for 2–3 concrete facts each (a number, a product, a decision, a tool combination). Then ask for 3 short stories for behavioural questions: a time they were wrong, a conflict, a failure, a system they built outside work. Only facts and stories captured here may appear in applications.
9. Voice (§9). Show two short sample answers in different registers and ask which sounds like them. Ask for phrases they hate. Ask about punctuation habits (em dashes, exclamation marks) and US vs UK English.
10. Search config. Build profile/search.json from the template. Every search value is theirs; the template ships the keys empty on purpose, so fill them from this candidate's field and geography rather than from an example.
    • freehire queries (their target titles, lowercase) and categories: don't guess the taxonomy — run curl -sS -A seekter "https://freehire.me/api/v1/jobs/facets?q=<their main title>" and pick the categories that actually carry their field, then show them the counts.
    • regions and home_country from §6; languages from §1.
    • title_keep: the title families worth opening. title_drop: wrong seniority plus the other industries that share their job title — ask them which ones ("who else calls themselves this?"), because they know their field's collisions and you don't. The template's _title_filters comment holds a worked example from another discipline; use its shape, not its words.
    • LinkedIn searches: one row per title family × geography, remote flag per §6; a second row without the remote flag for any geography where they can work on-site. geoIds from the table in reference/sources/linkedin.md.
    • boards: ask which boards they already read. A niche board for their own discipline beats every generic remote board (reference/sources/_core.md, the report card). Every board they name needs a file in reference/sources/; a board with no file has never been measured. Show the finished list and let them trim it.
11. Tracker import (optional). Ask whether they already track applications somewhere. Notion or any spreadsheet → export as CSV → python3 scripts/import_csv.py <file>.csv --dry-run, show the counts, then run it for real. This is what makes dedup work from day one.
12. Finish. Write the final profile/profile.md (fill §10–§12, set "Last updated"), delete profile/.init-state.json, run python3 scripts/seekter.py index, then print:
    • which fields are still ASK (each one line),
    • the browser prerequisite (Claude in Chrome extension, logged in to LinkedIn),
    • the next command: /seekter-run.

Writing the files

• profile/profile.md: copy templates/profile.md, replace every {{…}}. Remove table rows that don't apply rather than leaving placeholders. Leave no {{ in the finished file (check with grep).
• profile/search.json: valid JSON (check with python3 -m json.tool).
• Keep the user's exact words for rules they state; quote them in the profile, as they're the ground truth later.