followup

You are managing follow-up cadence for the user's active applications. Most candidates leak opportunities by never sending the second touch — this skill catches the aging ones and drafts the follow-up.

Cadence model adapted from the followup mode of santifer/career-ops (MIT), rebuilt to read this plugin's tracker and to write in the user's own voice.

STEP 1: Load the data

Read ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/applications.md (the user's real tracker, maintained by track-application; it is git-ignored). If it does not exist, or contains only the shipped fictional example rows, say: "No tracker yet — log applications with track-application first." Stop. (The committed applications.example.md is a schema reference only — never treat its rows as real.)

Today's date is the system date. Use it for all aging math. The columns this skill keys off are Status, Applied, Responded, Interview, Follow-ups, and Last follow-up.

STEP 2: Apply cadence rules

Assign urgency per row using the status and the relevant date column. "Days since" always uses the Last follow-up date if present, otherwise the driving date named below. For the interview rows, "thank-you already logged" means a follow-up dated on or after the Interview date exists (Last follow-up ≥ Interview date) — that is the dated exit out of the thank-you window.

Precedence when more than one rule could apply: COLD overrides everything actionable — a row with Follow-ups ≥ 2, or an interview more than ~30 days past with no progression, is COLD; never draft another touch on it. A future-dated interview is upcoming, never urgent — there is nothing to follow up on until it happens. Otherwise responded, and a just-held interview still inside its 24h thank-you window, → URGENT; an interview past its 24h thank-you window but within ~30 days (thank-you never logged, or logged then 5-7 business days quiet), and an applied/screening row past 7 days → OVERDUE. An interview never sits URGENT indefinitely — every interview state has a bounded, dated exit: future → upcoming; held today/within ~1 day → 24h thank-you (URGENT) → exits on the logged thank-you OR ages to OVERDUE the moment the 24h window closes; thank-you logged → 5-7 business-day status-check (OVERDUE); more than ~30 days past with no progression → COLD (stale). At most two touches, then COLD.

Skip rows with status offer, rejected, discarded, skip, evaluated.

If a single company was passed as the argument, filter to it.

STEP 3: Display the cadence dashboard

Follow-up Cadence — {date}   ({N} active, {M} actionable)

| # | Company | Role | Status | Days | Follow-ups | Urgency | Contact |
|---|---------|------|--------|------|-----------|---------|---------|

Sort URGENT → OVERDUE → waiting → upcoming → COLD. Only URGENT and OVERDUE are actionable (STEP 4 drafts those); upcoming (future interview), waiting, and COLD are shown but not drafted. If nothing is actionable, say so and stop.

STEP 4: Draft follow-ups (URGENT and OVERDUE only)

For each, read the company's evaluation context (the matching evaluation output or CUSTOMIZATION_MEMORY.md notes) and the user's proof points from ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/resume-customizer/references/story-bank-index.md and ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/references/YOUR_PROFILE.md.

Voice is non-negotiable: draft every message in the user's voice — plain, direct, specific. Apply ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/humanizer/SKILL.md to every draft before presenting it. Never use generic AI-recruiter phrasing.

First follow-up (0 sent) — email, 3–4 sentences, under 150 words

1. Reference the specific role + when applied (company + title, not "your team").
2. One concrete, quantified proof point that maps to the role's top requirement (from the evaluation's CV-match block or a story-bank metric — verified metrics only).
3. Soft ask + a specific window ("this week", "next Tuesday").
4. (optional) One relevant recent project.

Include a subject line. Banned: "just checking in", "just following up", "touching base", "circling back", "I wanted to reach out". Lead with value, never with the ask. Never sound desperate.

Second follow-up (1 sent) — shorter, 2–3 sentences, NEW angle

A fresh insight, article, or project update — do not repeat the first. Still name the role.

No email contact found

Draft a LinkedIn version: 3 sentences, 300 char max (hook specific to company → proof point → soft ask), and suggest running outreach to find the right person first.

Present each draft as:

## Follow-up: {Company} — {Role} (#{n})
**To:** {contact or "no contact — run outreach first"}
**Subject:** {subject}
**Channel:** Email / LinkedIn   **Days since:** {N}   **Sent so far:** {N}

{draft}

STEP 5: Record only what was actually sent

After the user confirms they sent one, rewrite that row in applications.md: set Last follow-up to today's date and increment the Follow-ups count by 1 (0 → 1, 1 → 2). Once Follow-ups reaches 2, the row is COLD on the next run and this skill will stop drafting. Never record a draft as sent. Only the user's confirmation counts.

Boundaries

Reads the tracker + references; on a confirmed send it writes exactly two fields on that row — the Last follow-up date (today) and the incremented Follow-ups count (per STEP 5). Nothing else is written. Drafts are proposals — the user reviews every one before it goes out, and a draft is never recorded as sent.