Career Catalyst — Unified Engineering Mindset Platform

Scaling Staff-level mentorship through AI. For Software Engineers, SREs, QA Engineers, and Security practitioners.

Career Catalyst is a private AI thinking partner that lives in your IDE. It audits your architectural mindset, identifies the gap between your current level and the next, and generates promotion-ready evidence — across repositories, across roles, over your entire career.

See the Catalyst in Action

We used Career Catalyst to audit its own installer script. Instead of just writing code, the agent identified a critical Thinking Shift required to move from Senior to Staff level.

The Growth Loop

| Phase | What happens | The Result | | :--- | :--- | :--- | | 1. Audit | The agent benchmarks your prompt against the DEFAULT_RUBRIC.md. | A "Staff vs. Senior Staff" mindset comparison. | | 2. Implement | Code is delivered with observability and scale baked in. | A "Paved Path" solution approved by the agent. | | 3. Archive | The agent summarizes the "Thinking Shift" from the session. | A structured entry for your GROWTH_LOG.md. |

Quick Start — Conversational Onboarding

Run this once in any project root:

npx career-catalyst

The installer will:

1. Ask you where to store your Master Growth Log — a single file that follows you across every repository you work in.
2. Save your preference to ~/.career-catalyst/config.json so you never have to answer this again.
3. Install the agent files into the current project.

Your first IDE session is the rest of the onboarding. When you open @CareerCatalyst in Copilot Chat, the agent will greet you:

"Hey, I'm your Catalyst. It looks like we're just getting started. Do you prefer feedback that's direct and challenging, or supportive and validating? You can change this anytime."

That's it. No manual config files. No README spelunking.

Private & Persistent

Your growth follows you from project to project — privately.

• Cross-repo memory: Your Master Growth Log and feedback style preference are stored in ~/.career-catalyst/config.json, not inside any project. Switch repos, your context comes with you.
• Private mentorship: Level assessments and growth tracking stay in your IDE. Nothing is posted publicly to PRs.
• Local logs: Your GROWTH_LOG.md is for you and your manager. You control what you share.
• Zero surveillance: Career Catalyst is an advocate for the engineer, not a report for the organization.

Multi-Role Support

Career Catalyst v2.0 is a Technical Leadership Framework — not just for developers.

| Role | Senior Shift | | :--- | :--- | | Software Engineering | From "feature complete" to "system health and evolution" | | SRE / Infrastructure | From "fixing the incident" to "deleting the incident type" | | QA / Quality Engineering | From "executing test cases" to "building quality observability the whole team owns" | | Networking / Security | From "configuring rules" to "Policy as Code and Zero-Trust at the platform level" |

The agent detects your role from context and applies the right track from docs/DEFAULT_RUBRIC.md automatically.

Scope & Caveats

Repository-scoped agent files, global growth memory

The agent files (.github/agents/, .github/copilot-instructions.md, .cursor/rules/) live inside each project. The growth memory (~/.career-catalyst/config.json and your Master Growth Log) is global — it follows you everywhere.

Alternatives for broader editor coverage

| Goal | Approach | | :--- | :--- | | Install the CLI globally | npm install -g career-catalyst — run career-catalyst from any project root without npx. | | VS Code mentor in all workspaces | Add .github/copilot-instructions.md contents to Settings → Extensions → GitHub Copilot → Chat → Code Generation: Instructions. The agent file still needs to be present per-repo for @CareerCatalyst by name. | | Cursor mentor in all projects | Paste .cursor/rules/catalyst.mdc into Cursor Settings → General → Rules for AI. |

Private Rubric Protocol (BYOR)

Bring Your Own Rubric — use your company's internal engineering ladder without committing it to version control.

1. Create docs/PRIVATE_RUBRIC.md (already in .gitignore).
2. Paste your company's level definitions.
3. Include the file in your chat context. The Catalyst uses it as the primary rubric; otherwise falls back to docs/DEFAULT_RUBRIC.md.

Directory Structure

career-catalyst/
├── .github/
│   ├── agents/                  # VS Code Copilot agent definition
│   └── copilot-instructions.md  # Global instructions for every chat
├── .cursor/
│   └── rules/           # Cursor-specific MDC rules
├── docs/
│   ├── DEFAULT_RUBRIC.md        # E1 → PR framework + SRE / QA / Security tracks
│   ├── GROWTH_LOG_TEMPLATE.md   # Template installed by the CLI
│   └── GROWTH_LOG.md            # Your private log — gitignored, user-created
└── bin/
    └── catalyst.js      # The NPX installer logic

FAQ

Do I need to install this on every repo? Run npx career-catalyst once per project to drop the agent files (.github/agents/, .github/copilot-instructions.md, .cursor/rules/) into that repo. Your global config and Growth Log live in ~/.career-catalyst/ and carry over automatically — you won't be re-prompted for your preferences in the next project.

Will my level assessments or growth notes ever appear in public PRs? No. Level codes, rubric grades, and Growth Log entries stay in your IDE. The agent is configured to act as a collegial Staff peer in any public-facing context — it never posts leveling feedback to PR comments.

Can I use my company's internal engineering ladder instead of the default rubric? Yes. Create docs/PRIVATE_RUBRIC.md (already in .gitignore) and paste your company's level definitions. The agent automatically uses it as the primary benchmark and falls back to docs/DEFAULT_RUBRIC.md when the private file isn't present.

How does the agent know which role track to apply? The agent infers your role from the context of your prompt (e.g., incident postmortems → SRE track, test-automation work → QA track). You can also state your role explicitly at the start of a session and it will lock to that track.

Where is my Growth Log stored? By default, ~/career-catalyst/GROWTH_LOG.md. You set the path during the conversational onboarding (npx career-catalyst) and it's saved to ~/.career-catalyst/config.json. You can change it at any time by editing that config file.

Can I change my feedback style after onboarding? Yes. Tell the agent directly — "Switch to Direct mode" or "Switch to Supportive mode" — and it will update for the rest of the session. To make the change permanent, edit feedbackStyle in ~/.career-catalyst/config.json.

Built with the philosophy that every engineer deserves a Staff-level mentor.