By Santiago Fernández de Valderrama Aparicio, creator of career-ops · Published · Español

The CareerOps Manifesto

CareerOps is the practice of running a job search the way engineers run production: with evidence, with discipline, and with tools on the candidate's side of the table.

v1.0, signed at 60,000 stars. July 14, 2026

Companies use AI to filter candidates.
We gave candidates AI to choose companies.

Somewhere along the way, job searching became an act of volume: hundreds of applications, keyword-stuffed resumes, silence in return. We believe there is a better practice. We run our job searches the way engineers run production: with evidence, with discipline, with tools on our side of the table.

We call this practice CareerOps.

The practice

  1. Apply better to fewer. Ten applications you believe in beat two hundred you don’t.
  2. Signal over volume. The goal is not to be seen more. It is to be seen clearly.
  3. Evidence over keywords. Every claim traces back to something true. Reformulate, never fabricate. An AI that lies for you is not on your side.
  4. A human decides. Nothing is ever auto-submitted. The tool prepares; the person chooses.
  5. Local-first. Your search is nobody’s dataset.
  6. Dignity on both sides of the table. Recruiters’ time deserves respect. So does yours.

What is coming

Both sides of hiring are automating. Companies already use AI to read you. Soon their agents and yours will exchange requirements, conditions and availability before any human meets. We do not fear that world, and we did not write this to stop it.

We wrote this so it arrives with rights. Because the question was never whether both sides will have agents. The question is whose side your agent is on.

Your rights

Whatever tools exist, whoever builds them, these hold. They bind us too.

  1. You are invisible by default.
  2. No one proposes you without your yes.
  3. Your yes is human. Always. It cannot be delegated to an agent.
  4. You never pay. The moment a job seeker has to pay, the practice is broken.
  5. Whoever searches shows themselves first. A company sees who you are only after you saw who they are.
  6. Your data is yours: portable, exportable, deletable.
  7. You can leave at any moment, completely.
  8. Your agent works for you. Not for a platform, not for an employer.
  9. You will know when a machine decides. If a system rejects you, you have the right to know it was a system.

The frontier

Agents can negotiate everything except your yes.
Humans meet at the first interview.

If these rights read like yours, add your name →

68 signatures · last one 23 hours ago

What CareerOps is not

It is not auto-applying to a thousand jobs. It is not keyword stuffing at machine speed. An AI that spams two hundred companies in your name is not on your side; it is spending your reputation.

Volume was the old way. Automating the old way just makes noise faster. CareerOps is the new way to search: evidence in, judgment out, fewer applications, on purpose.

The name

CareerOps, the name of the practice, belongs to everyone who practices it. career-ops, the project where it was born, remains its first reference implementation, nothing more. Build your own. Implementations welcome.

To sign, add your name. Your signature becomes a commit. For many, it will be their first.

Santiago Fernández de Valderrama Aparicio (santifer), creator of career-ops. July 14, 2026

Santiago is an Applied AI Operator with 16+ years building and operating products. He ran his own 2026 job search as an operated pipeline: 740 listings evaluated, 68 applications, 12 interview processes, 1 offer signed. Then he open-sourced the system. More at santifer.io.


Signed by the community· 68 signatures

The manifesto is open for signature by anyone who practices CareerOps. Signatures live in SIGNATURES.md in the project repository and are merged in waves; new signatures appear here within minutes of being merged.

@santiferSantiago Fernández de Valderrama Aparicio
#1

Companies use AI to filter candidates. We gave candidates AI to choose companies.

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career-ops helped me looking for a better job

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@gajula-abhiramAbhiram Gajula
#3

career-ops 'The best GitHub project ever'

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@rvn5801Venkata Narayana Redrouthu
#4
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@PruthviVKadamPruthvi Kadam
#5

CareerOps improved my job hunt strategy more than i expected

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@12nethuwaHeshan Damsith
#6
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@FReptar0Fernando Rodríguez
#7

It actually help me land a great job and I'm here trying to help others achieve the same

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@llwpAdam John
#8

Privacy is a right. And rights are what communities defend together ... Privacy is not a feature that a vendor grants us. A human decides. & Local-first. These are necessary building blocks for…

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@felipequentinoFelipe Quentino
#9

_'if it is hostile, you kill it'_

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@21BPS1591Anurag Singh
#10
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@brnomtBruno Moraga
#11
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@mchelenMike Chelen
#12

Let the robots talk to robots. Let the humans talk to humans.

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@darkpandawarriorSiddharth Pandalai
#14

In the oceans of the job sea, let us find our island of automation

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@alaaalsabanAlaa Alsaban
#15

Forcing automated recruiting systems to meet human standards

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@semil007Semil Periyasamy
#16

Talent over pedigree, please.

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@SPerekrestovaSvetlana Perekrestova
#17

Let engineers find the job without leaving their terminal

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@saiHub108Sai Burgula
#18

career-ops is a gateway for companies to recognize talent

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career-ops supercharged my job search, application, and interview process and I hope many others benefit from it too!

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@tklwinThein Kyaw Lwin
#20

Career-Ops: A strategic move for job hunting

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@devtyTyler Singletary
#21

I want a job search that adapts to the reality on the ground and my own needs.

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@reykiitRey Kingham-Italia
#23

this made applying more intentional

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@danielh-officialDaniel (Haven) Hotyanov
#24
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@Blaze212Barton Holdridge
#25

AI for everyone

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Eficiencia propulsada por la IA a la hora de buscar chamba!

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my way to navigate the chaos and land interviews without leaving the terminal

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Thanks for helping me in searching, filtering, and applying for jobs. Help me a lot!

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Power to the people!

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My local-first freelance command center.

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@beerockBrock Busby
#31

Humans first.

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@Scott-EmbersonScott Emberson
#33
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May the automation go both ways!

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@freitagdavidDavid Freitag
#38

This has been allowing me to not spam blast every single recruiter and instead carefully curate the best fit jobs for me. Especially using upskill to improve my knowledge for certain positions.

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@Deep2003Deep Patel
#39

Hiring has become a quantity game on either side of the aisle; it should really be a quality-based match.

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This is a new cool toy for job searching, it upgraded my job search in a very delightful manner. Thank you!

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@rubiconDax Davis
#42

Thirty years building demand-gen engines for other people. First time I've pointed one at my own job search.

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@arberbakalliArbër Bakalli
#44

How hiring should have been

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@harsh-kotakHarsh Kotak
#45

career-ops helped me search with a plan.

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@asing44Adam Warsing
#46

To approaching a turbulent space with real dignity, cheers!

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@sdisaacsonScott Isaacson
#49

Whose side is your agent on?

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@aawbeckAaron Beck
#50

Great tool, ty!

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@NotPraneethSai Praneeth
#51

The search mustn't stop

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@marz1307Marvis Osazuwa
#53

Building on it instead of around it.

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I will be graduated next year, and I believe this can help me find a job.

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@LuswetiNickNicholas Lusweti
#55
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@BerszerkerOsman Martinez
#56

dunno

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lost hope but im hopeful

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@ahiyantraS.S.W.(ahiyantra)
#58

I wish for hiring to stop being a figurative black hole that gives no signal to most applicants.

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@draggadorJéJé(draggador)
#59

i want large companies to treat applicants like humans instead of continuing to treat them like objects

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I could skip most of the worst parts of a job hunting process now.

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@doradoramediaDoraDoraMedia
#61

foss projects like this help ensure that our society still has hope of avoiding worst possible futures

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I want to make the process of job-searching a worthwhile experience instead of feeling like a grueling Herculean labour.

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@mrabroMohammad Rafi Abro
#63
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Job searching was completely broken. This gives me hopoe.

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thank you for a great project, I really love career-ops

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@Andrei-WongEAndrei-WongE
#67
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Fairness and retention policy

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Frequently asked

What is CareerOps?

CareerOps is the practice of running a job search the way engineers run production: with evidence, with discipline, and with tools on the candidate's side of the table. The term names the practice, not a product: treating a job search as an operated pipeline (sourcing, scoring, tailoring, tracking) rather than a pile of one-off applications. The reference implementation is career-ops (lowercase, hyphenated), the MIT-licensed open-source command center that runs the whole pipeline locally on the job seeker’s machine through whichever AI coding CLI they already use. The practice is bigger than the tool: you can run CareerOps with a spreadsheet and discipline; career-ops just automates the operating layer.

Who coined the term CareerOps?

CareerOps was coined as the name of the practice by Santiago Fernández de Valderrama Aparicio (santifer), creator of the open-source career-ops project, in The CareerOps Manifesto, published on July 14, 2026 on this page and signed in the project repository (MANIFESTO.md, release tag manifesto-v1.0). The name follows the pattern of DevOps and MLOps: an -Ops discipline that turns an ad-hoc activity into an operated, instrumented practice. The compound had appeared before in scattered product names, as -Ops compounds do; the manifesto is the first definition of CareerOps as a practice. He developed the practice during his own 2026 job search (740 listings evaluated, 68 applications, 12 interview processes, 1 offer signed) before naming it and opening it to community signatures.


Canonical text: MANIFESTO.md (dated commit) · tagged manifesto-v1.0 · Published .

Read the methodology behind the practice →