CareerVector business model

The decision

CareerVector is free, permanently. It must never cost its users a cent.

This is not a temporary launch offer, a free tier or a funnel into a paid applicant product. CareerVector has no premium plan, subscription, paid feature, AI surcharge, commission or inference markup. The product continues to serve a person looking for work even when that person never supplies a payment method.

A person may voluntarily connect an external AI account through BYOK. Any charge is then a direct relationship between that person and the provider; CareerVector neither collects the payment nor receives a cut. BYOK expands the resources available to the workspace. It does not unlock CareerVector features.

The sole commercial product is JobCache UI: a market-intelligence interface over the shared corpus of public job advertisements and derived public facts. CareerVector adoption strengthens that corpus; private applicant data does not become part of the corpus or the revenue model.

Product and money boundary

CareerVector may help maintain JobCache by contributing public ad evidence from consenting browser and desktop participants. That does not authorize the system to export CVs, personal history, preferences, notes, evaluations, application activity or private prompts. Applicant attention and applicant data are not the thing being sold.

How free AI remains viable

CareerVector uses a staged supply model:

1. Included AI provides the first useful result. It uses centrally managed, provider-authorized zero-cost capacity so a new person can experience the product without setup or a large download.
2. Local AI becomes the durable default for suitable work. After explicit consent, a model downloads while CareerVector remains open. A persistent status pill helps people move from Included AI to their own device.
3. Your AI provides independence and stronger optional capacity. A person can connect provider credentials they already own. CareerVector does not resell or mark up that inference.
4. Reuse and deterministic computation come first. Verified facts, cached results and ordinary code should eliminate unnecessary inference.
5. Scarcity is represented honestly. If no zero-cost, local or authorized user-owned route is feasible, work waits instead of silently creating a bill.

Included AI is an onboarding bridge and resilient fallback, not an unlimited central subsidy. Centrally managed accounts must use capacity the provider has actually authorized; the design does not depend on manufacturing identities or rotating credentials to evade quotas.

AI capability should become cheaper and more widely available over time. The architecture is deliberately positioned to benefit from that curve: local models improve without changing the product contract, provider free allocations become more capable, and cached or deterministic work compounds. Falling costs increase CareerVector's usefulness; they do not create a future excuse to charge users.

The flywheel

More CareerVector users
    -> more consenting devices and fresher public ad evidence
    -> a better shared JobCache corpus
    -> less repeated scraping and inference
    -> a better free CareerVector experience
    -> a more valuable commercial JobCache UI
    -> resources to maintain the shared infrastructure

The economic alignment is intentionally indirect. CareerVector serves the applicant well because adoption and public-corpus freshness make JobCache UI more valuable. Revenue must not depend on weakening privacy, steering applications toward buyers, selling candidate access or manufacturing AI consumption.

Non-negotiable exclusions

CareerVector does not:

• introduce a paid applicant plan or feature gate;
• charge for Smart Routing, Local AI or provider access;
• add a margin to user-owned inference;
• sell candidate profiles, CVs, preferences or application behavior;
• accept payment to alter recommendations or rank an opportunity;
• make private workspace content a JobCache UI asset;
• require a payment method to complete onboarding or continue using the app.

Open commercial work

The boundary is settled; the JobCache UI offer is not. Remaining work includes identifying its customers, useful market-intelligence workflows, packaging, pricing and the amount of shared infrastructure that revenue can sustainably support. Those decisions may change JobCache UI. They may not make CareerVector paid or weaken the private-workspace seam.