focus-career

Run when the user opens a new Cowork session with Career Navigator, or when they have scheduled this skill via Cowork /schedule (optional — for tighter proactive critical checks).

Host integration: Claude Cowork’s SessionStart hook (see hooks/hooks.json) injects hooks/context/session-start.md so this workflow is explicitly requested at session open. If the user invokes this skill manually without that hook, follow the same steps below.

Manual fallback: In environments where the SessionStart hook does not auto-fire reliably, run /career-navigator:focus-career at the start of the task/session.

This skill is the critical-only counterpart to daily-schedule. It does not replace the daily digest.

Workflow

1. Locate {user_dir} and core files

Look at the current working directory and any user-provided path. Use that as {user_dir}.

Check for:

• {user_dir}/CareerNavigator/profile.md
• {user_dir}/CareerNavigator/ExperienceLibrary.json
• {user_dir}/CareerNavigator/tracker.json
• {user_dir}/CareerNavigator/artifacts-index.json

If these are missing, treat as first run and output:

Welcome to Career Navigator

Run /career-navigator:launch to initialize your CareerNavigator data files and enable automation.

2. Returning session: critical-only checks

Read {user_dir}/CareerNavigator/tracker.json.

Only surface critical notifications:

1. Imminent offer deadline

   • Any application with status: "offer" and offer.deadline within the next 24 hours.
   • If {user_dir}/CareerNavigator/offer-context-{application_id}.json is not present for that application, label the critical reason as: "Offer evaluation due (run /career-navigator:evaluate-offer)."

2. Imminent follow-up deadline

   • Any application with follow_up_date equal to today.
   • If current local time is within the last 6 hours of the day, mark as critical "due in a few hours."

3. Meeting today with no prep logged

   • Same meeting-today rule as daily-schedule §3.1: any stage_history row with date = today and stage (case-insensitive) containing any of: interview, recruiter, phone screen, phone_screen, hiring manager, hm , hm interview, technical, panel, onsite, executive, final round, final interview.
   • For that application, prep is logged if any notes[] entry in the last 48 hours has text starting with [prep].
   • If meeting today and no qualifying [prep] note in 48h → critical (suggest day-of brief + deep prep).

Do not output full pipeline digest, overdue rollups, or artifact counts here. Those belong to daily-schedule.

3. Output format

If no critical items:

Career Navigator — Session Start: no critical alerts right now.

If critical items exist:

**Career Navigator — Critical Alerts** [{today}]

- {Company} — {Role}: {critical reason} ({time remaining})
- {Company} — {Role}: {critical reason} ({time remaining})

After listing alerts, add one action line:

Run /career-navigator:track-application or /career-navigator:follow-up to update next steps; for same-day interviews use /career-navigator:morning-brief or /career-navigator:daily-schedule (pre-interview subsection) and /career-navigator:prep-interview for full prep (or /career-navigator:evaluate-offer if an offer evaluation due item appeared).