I automated my freelance job hunt

Why I built this

While travelling I only have an hour or two a day. Scrolling job boards ate most of it, and the good jobs were gone by the time I found them: the ones with few applicants go fast.

I wanted the opposite of a job board: a short list of jobs I'd genuinely take, already understood, with a first draft ready.

What it does

Four times a day it checks Upwork and Airtasker for new jobs, throws away the ones that don't fit, and sends me one message per job worth applying to: the job link, why it fits, and a draft proposal I can copy. Everything is logged to a spreadsheet so nothing gets lost.

How it works

1. A free scheduler wakes it up at 7am, 11am, 3pm and 7pm. It started at twice a day; checking more often means I see good jobs while they still have few applicants.
2. It only looks at new jobs since the last run, which keeps it fast and cheap.
3. It filters hard: remote, part-time or one-off, a sensible budget, not already swamped with proposals, and a skill match I can honestly claim.
4. For the good ones it reads the whole post and drafts a short proposal and answers to any screening questions.
5. One Discord message per job lands on my phone. Tap the title to open the job.
6. Every job goes into a Google Sheet, so I can track what I applied to.

What it runs on

A scheduled AI routine that runs in the cloud (so my laptop can be off), a free web scheduler to trigger it, a Discord channel for the messages and a Google Sheet as the log.

What it costs to run

Scheduler	Free
AI routine	Runs on a plan I already pay for
My time	A few minutes to read the shortlist and decide

What I learned

• The filter is the product. The first version sent too many jobs. Being strict about budget, competition and honest skill fit made it useful.
• "Only new jobs" was the biggest saving. Re-reading old posts every run wasted time and money.
• It drafts, I decide. It never submits anything or messages a client. Applying is a two-second decision I want to keep.