🔬 ApplyTools – Smart Academic Position Matcher

ApplyTools is a Django-based application that scrapes academic and research positions from various sources, matches them against your CV using AI, and helps you manage your job applications. It leverages DeepSeek's free chat API (via the Deepseek-API library) for intelligent CV–job matching.

• Multi‑source scraping – Supports both HTML and JSON API sources with flexible selectors and authentication.
• AI‑powered matching – Extracts position details and matches them against your CV using DeepSeek's models.
• Application workflow – Track positions from PENDING → SHORTLISTED → APPLIED → INTERVIEWING → OFFERED/REJECTED.
• Real‑time progress – Server‑sent events (SSE) for scraping and matching progress.
• Full‑text CV matching – Paste your CV and get detailed match scores, category, and recommendations.
• REST API – All operations available via a clean REST API with pagination.
• Admin‑friendly – Web UI to add/edit websites and manage positions.
• Initial data fixtures – Pre‑configured websites and AI prompts for a quick start.

Main dashboard showing websites, scraping progress, and match status.

Detailed view of a matched position with AI-generated scores and recommendations.

More screenshots will be added as the project evolves.

This project would not be possible without the excellent work of sums001 and contributors on:

Deepseek-API – A free LLM API powered by DeepSeek that turns the free chat at chat.deepseek.com into an OpenAI‑compatible API. No API key, no credits, no paid plan.

We are deeply grateful for this open‑source contribution that makes AI‑powered matching accessible to everyone.

• Python 3.9+
• Git
• Playwright (for browser automation)
• A DeepSeek account (free tier works perfectly)
• A modern browser (for the admin UI)

Follow these steps to set up ApplyTools on your local machine.

git clone https://github.com/alaeimo/applytools.git
cd applytools

macOS / Linux:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Windows (PowerShell):

python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1

Windows (cmd):

python -m venv venv
venv\Scripts\activate.bat

The project includes a template for environment variables. Copy it to .env and adjust if needed.

cp .env-template .env

pip install -r requirements.txt

Playwright is used for headless browser automation during scraping and authentication.

playwright install chromium

Run the authentication script to sign in once. A browser will open – log into your DeepSeek account and solve the human‑check. Your session will be cached for future use.

python -m apps.ai.deepseek.auth

This step is essential for the AI matching to work.

python manage.py migrate

🔍 Field of Study Note
The provided website fixtures are pre‑configured for Computer Science positions (e.g., PhD, postdoc, and faculty positions in CS, AI, and related fields). If you are in a different field, you have two options:

1. Before loading: Edit fixtures/websites.json manually to adjust search URLs, API endpoints, and filters to match your discipline.
2. After loading: Use the web UI to modify the website settings (e.g., change the pagination_url_pattern to include your field's keywords).

The fixtures are meant as a starting point – customize them to fit your research area!

This imports a starter set of website configurations and AI prompt templates, so you can start scraping and matching immediately.

python manage.py loaddata fixtures/websites.json
python manage.py loaddata fixtures/prompts.json

python manage.py createsuperuser

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000 to start using ApplyTools.

Note: The default admin interface is available at /admin if you have ENABLE_DJANGO_ADMIN_PANEL=True in your .env.

• Add websites via the Web UI (green "+" button) or the REST API.
• Configure HTML selectors (for HTML scraping) or API endpoints with JSON key paths (for API scraping).
• Set authentication tokens and pagination parameters.
• Choose whether to fetch position details via HTML or from the API response using the Detail Source selector.

• Click "Scrape" on a website card.
• Real‑time progress is streamed via Server‑Sent Events (SSE).
• New positions are saved to the database and can be matched later.

• Click "Match" on a website card.
• Paste your CV text and choose the language.
• The system:
  1. Extracts the position summary and requirements.
  2. Analyzes your CV.
  3. Calculates detailed match scores across multiple dimensions (eligibility, academic fit, research fit, etc.).
  4. Provides a final verdict and recommendation (Strongly Recommended, Recommended, Possible but Risky, Not Recommended).
• Results are saved with the position for future reference.

• Pending Review – Newly scraped or matched positions.
• Shortlisted – Positions you want to apply to.
• Applied – Applications submitted.
• Interviewing / Offered / Accepted / Rejected – Full tracking.

All API endpoints are versioned and respond with JSON.

applytools/
├── apps/
│   ├── ai/                 # AI matching logic + DeepSeek integration
│   ├── websites/           # Website models and scraping services
│   ├── positions/          # Position models and serializers
│   └── core/               # Shared utilities
├── fixtures/               # Initial data (websites, prompts)
├── .env-template           # Environment variables template
├── manage.py
├── requirements.txt
└── README.md

You can test a website configuration without saving positions using the Django shell:

from apps.websites.models import Website
from apps.websites.services import PositionScraper
import asyncio

website = Website.objects.get(id=1)
scraper = PositionScraper(website)

async def test():
    async for pos in scraper.scrape(max_pages=2):
        print(f"{pos['title']} – {pos['url']}")

asyncio.run(test())

This prints scraped positions without persisting them.

The .env file controls runtime behavior. Below are the available variables with their defaults:

Example .env (provided in .env-template):

SECRET_KEY="django-insecure-^ko#8&3jd+u@fdh9-qb*36+xl11p3ms45ryrgg34t5yy4557i&%"
ALLOWED_HOSTS=*
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS=http://localhost:3030
DEBUG=True
ENABLE_DJANGO_ADMIN_PANEL=True
ENABLE_HTTPS=False
MEDIA_HOST=http://127.0.0.1:8000
API_VERSION='v1'
TIMEZONE=UTC

Two fixture files are provided for a quick start:

• fixtures/websites.json – Pre‑configured websites (e.g., Academic Positions, DAAD, etc.) with working selectors/API endpoints.
• fixtures/prompts.json – AI prompt templates for matching.

🔍 Important Note
The websites in fixtures/websites.json are configured specifically for Computer Science research positions. The search URLs, API endpoints, and filters are tailored to CS-related keywords (e.g., "computer-science", "AI", "PhD").

If your research area is different, you should:

• Option A (Recommended): Load the fixtures, then use the web UI to edit each website's settings (e.g., change pagination_url_pattern from /jobs/position/phd/field/computer-science to /jobs/position/phd/field/your-field).
• Option B: Edit fixtures/websites.json directly (it's a JSON file) before loading it, adjusting the fields to match your discipline.

To load them after migration:

python manage.py loaddata fixtures/websites.json
python manage.py loaddata fixtures/prompts.json

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request.

1. Fork the repository.
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature).
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Add some amazing feature').
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature).
5. Open a Pull Request.

We actively encourage improvements to scraping support, matching accuracy, and UI.

MIT License – Free to use, modify, and distribute.
Not for commercial resale or use as the foundation of a proprietary SAAS product without express permission.

Copyright (c) 2026 Mohammad Alaei – alaeimo.ir

• Mohammad Alaei – alaeimo.ir

• Deepseek-API – For providing a free, open‑source bridge to DeepSeek's chat models.
• DeepSeek – For their powerful AI models made available to everyone.

This is an unofficial project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by DeepSeek. Use responsibly and in accordance with DeepSeek's terms of service.

Built with ❤️ for researchers and academics everywhere.