Career Covered - AI-Powered Cover Letter Generator

Career Covered helps you turn one cover letter into many. Give it a cover letter you've already written and a job description, and it rewrites it to fit the new role in seconds — same voice, new job. You can use it as a guest, or create a free account to save your templates and keep a history of every letter you've generated.

Features

• Works without an account. Paste your template and a job description, hit generate, and download — no sign-up required.
• Sign in with email or Google. Creating an account lets you save templates and revisit past cover letters from any device.
• Save unlimited templates. Keep as many starting templates as you like, rename them, edit them, and delete the ones you don't need — including deleting several at once.
• See every letter you've generated. A history page lists your past cover letters so you don't have to dig through old downloads.
• Minimal Changes mode. Only swaps in the new company name, role, and a few key skills — everything else about your original letter stays the same.
• Same-Language mode. If your job description is in another language, the letter is written in that language instead of defaulting to English.
• Word count control. Tell it how long the letter should be and it sticks to that limit.
• Market-specific tone. Choose International, Sweden, or Bangladesh and the writing style adjusts to fit hiring norms in that market.
• Bring your own API key (optional). Use your own free Groq API key if you want, or just use the app's shared key — your key is never stored, only used for your request.
• Dark mode, a mobile-friendly layout, and an installable app (PWA) that works like a native app on your phone or laptop.
• Download as PDF or Word, named automatically after you.
• FAQ page for quick answers to common questions.

Getting Started (Docker — recommended)

The easiest way to run the whole app — frontend, backend, and database — is with a single Docker command:

docker compose --profile prod up --build -d

This starts everything you need: PostgreSQL, the API, and the web app, all wired together. Just copy .env.example to .env first and fill in your Groq API key (and Google OAuth credentials, if you want Google login):

cp .env.example .env
docker compose --profile prod up --build -d

Then open http://localhost:5173.

Prerequisites

• Docker

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For Developers

The sections below cover the technical architecture, local (non-Docker) development, and testing.

Architecture

This is a Turborepo monorepo (npm workspaces):

apps/
  api/     NestJS backend — auth, templates, cover letters, AI proxy (Postgres via Prisma)
  web/     React 19 + Vite frontend, deployed as a Cloudflare Worker
packages/
  db/              Prisma schema + generated client, shared as @career-covered/db
  eslint-config/   Shared ESLint flat configs for the React app and the Nest API
  tsconfig/        Shared base TypeScript config

Request flow: the frontend calls its own origin (/api/*, /auth/*).

• In the Cloudflare-hosted build, a lightweight Worker (apps/web/worker) proxies /api/generate directly to Groq and forwards everything else (/api/*, /auth/*) to the NestJS API.
• In a self-hosted/Docker setup, Nginx/the dev server proxies straight to the NestJS API, which exposes the same routes (AiController, AuthController, TemplateController, CoverLetterController).

Auth: HTTP-only session cookies (opaque random tokens stored in Postgres), bcrypt-hashed passwords, Google OAuth via arctic (PKCE flow). No JWTs.

Data model (packages/db/prisma/schema.prisma): User, OAuthAccount, Session, Template, CoverLetter are active. Resume and JobApplication exist in the schema for future phases but aren't wired into any endpoint yet.

Technology Stack

• Frontend: React 19, TypeScript, Vite 7
• State Management: Redux Toolkit + RTK Query
• Routing: React Router v7 (HashRouter, for environment-agnostic hosting)
• Styling: Tailwind CSS with dark mode
• Backend: NestJS 11, Prisma ORM, PostgreSQL
• Logging: nestjs-pino (pretty in dev, structured JSON in prod)
• API Docs: Swagger/OpenAPI at /docs
• AI Integration: Groq Cloud API, proxied server-side
• Testing: Vitest, React Testing Library, Playwright, Jest
• Build System: Turborepo
• Deployment: Cloudflare Workers + Pages, or Docker Compose

Local Development (without full Docker)

1. Clone the repository and copy the env file:

   git clone https://github.com/raadu/career-covered.git
   cd career-covered
   cp .env.example .env

2. Start just Postgres/pgAdmin/MinIO via Docker:

   npm run docker:up

3. Install dependencies:

   npm install

4. Run database migrations:

   npx prisma migrate deploy --schema packages/db/prisma/schema.prisma

5. Start the dev servers (API + web, via Turborepo):

   npm run dev

The web app runs at http://localhost:5173, the API at http://localhost:3000 (Swagger docs at http://localhost:3000/docs).

Testing and Quality Assurance

npm run test        # Vitest (web) + Jest (api), via Turborepo
npm run test:e2e    # Playwright end-to-end tests
npm run lint         # ESLint across all workspaces
npm run build        # Type-checks and builds all workspaces

Security and Privacy

• Sessions use opaque, random tokens stored in Postgres — not JWTs.
• Passwords are hashed with bcrypt (12 rounds); OAuth-only accounts have no password on file.
• Your Groq API key (if you provide one) is used per-request only — it is never written to the database.
• Every template and cover letter is scoped to the owning user's ID at the database query level.

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Built for professionals seeking an edge in their career journey.