Job Board Planner

The problem this kills

"Build me a job board" is one of the most scope-exploding prompts you can hand a coding agent. Within minutes it has invented an ATS pipeline, a Stripe subscriptions system, a resume-parsing engine, backfill scrapers, and a multi-tenant SaaS architecture — none of which you asked for, and all of which will eat your budget before a single real employer can post a job.

The opposite failure is equally common: agents ship a wafer-thin public list with fake seed data, no employer isolation, no job expiry handling, and a resume upload that stores nothing. Everything looks done until a second employer logs in and sees the first employer's applicants.

Why your agent can't fake this

This planner is built from systematic evidence across 12 real job-board products — open-source starters, live SaaS platforms, and CodeCanyon-style marketplace scripts. Every scope decision is anchored to what those 12 surfaces actually do, with counts recorded for each feature family.

Public job list and search appeared in 11 of 12 reviewed surfaces. SEO structured data and sitemap handling appeared in 8 of 12. Resume upload appeared in 8 of 12 — and every single one of those 8 required decisions about file security, private storage, and signed access. ATS pipeline features appeared in only 4 of 12, which is why the planner treats it as a named branch rather than a default.

Your agent cannot reproduce "resume upload: 8/12 sources, requires private storage, signed access, and retention posture" without re-doing the scrape. That counted evidence is what the planner encodes into every scope decision, default, and guard rail.

What you actually get

A structured questionnaire that runs before your agent writes a single line of code. The planner asks your business model first — one-off niche board, employer-paid business, aggregator, association career center, ATS/recruiting platform, or multi-board SaaS — because the answer determines which of fourteen feature branches belongs in your First Delivery and which must be explicitly deferred.

After discovery, the planner generates one complete CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md build spec containing: locked decisions, a forbidden-family scan that prevents deferred modules from leaking into active build steps, role and permission tables, a data model, a screen map with UI quality rules, server-side RBAC requirements, resume upload security gates, job lifecycle and SEO hygiene rules, an include/defer/skip ledger, and a nine-step build sequence with "do not continue until" acceptance gates at every step.

Every major recommendation cites a real evidence anchor — INV-, P, UI-, TECH-, PRICE-*, or frequency data — so you can audit what drove each decision.

Coverage

Phase 0 — First Delivery depth. Basic (7-9 build steps), Moderate (10-15 steps), or Advanced. Basic defaults to a single job board with public job search, employer posting, candidate application, resume upload with private storage, admin moderation, basic reports, and status-aware SEO.

Block 1 — Business model and board type. One-off niche board, internal careers portal, employer-paid board, association career center, aggregator, ATS platform, marketplace-script clone, or multi-board SaaS. Board size and who can post jobs.

Block 2 — Users and must-love workflow. Which roles exist; which one must love First Delivery most. Covers admin, employer/recruiter, candidate/job seeker, hiring manager, finance admin, and content moderator.

Block 3 — Core job-board loop. Public job list with search and filters, job detail pages, candidate apply flow, resume upload, candidate accounts, employer posting dashboard, employer applicant review, admin moderation queue, JobPosting structured data and sitemap hygiene, and basic reports and exports.

Block 4 — Branch selection. Paid listings, featured jobs, employer subscriptions, job alerts, saved jobs, company profile pages, backfill and aggregation, ATS pipeline, interviews and scorecards, AI matching, API and SSO integrations, multi-board SaaS, SMS notifications, and assessments. Each branch is gated — it cannot leak into Basic unless the buyer explicitly selects it.

Block 5 — Policies and local blockers. Country, currency, and language. Candidate model: guest apply, accounts, or both. Duplicate application policy. Job lifecycle and moderation approval policy. Resume and file handling. Existing data to import. Privacy, consent, and retention rules.

Block 6 — Stack, hosting, UI, and handover. Next.js, Laravel, Django, or no preference. Cloud, VPS, or self-hosted. Mobile-first candidate surface or desktop-first employer workbench. Whether the agent continues to Step 1 automatically after writing the spec.