Changelog | Applydrop

April 19, 2026

Website honesty pass, pricing clarity, and performance

Pricing page rewrite — replaced contradictory “we don’t publish pricing” prose with a clean beta-workspace tier; dropped the Enterprise tier in favor of a “Coaches & bootcamps” slot for cohort access
Blog page removed — dead “Coming soon” cards deleted, page unlinked from sitemap and footers
Footer status link fixed — now points to the live backend status page (api.applydrop.com/status) instead of a 404
Hero image optimization — WebP variants served via <picture> with PNG fallback; ~85% smaller than the PNG originals across 9 pages
SEO pages unified — seo-guides.css now uses the same brand tokens as the React landing (bg #0e1114, accent #cde25a)

Remove fake social proof, consolidate empty states

Fabricated testimonials removed — homepage no longer shows the three invented user quotes
Unverifiable stats replaced — “85%+ match accuracy”, “10x faster”, and “Bring your own API key” cards replaced with honest beta copy
“Join 2,400+ professionals” removed — auth card now shows accurate private-beta messaging
SEO shell trimmed — 7 redundant sections that duplicated the React landing were removed to reduce flash between shell and hydrated app (~15% HTML size cut)
Dashboard empty-state consolidation — new users pre-first-scan now see only the onboarding checklist; zero-stat cards, empty recommendations, and empty activity feed are hidden
“v1.0” label dropped — sidebar and dashboard footer now correctly say “Private beta”
Mobile hamburger nav — landing nav now collapses into an accessible drawer on small screens

LLM-first answer pipeline (Phases 1–3)

LLM-first answer generation — regex-based answer rules retired; OpenAI GPT-4.1-mini generates every form answer with structured reasoning and per-field confidence
Saved answer preparation — when you click Auto-Apply, 30 form answers are pre-computed alongside your tailored resume before the LinkedIn tab opens
Fuzzy dropdown matching — Levenshtein distance, a 70-country alias table, education aliases, and experience-range aliases so “Egyptian” matches “Egypt” and “Bachelor’s” matches “BS”
Composite confidence — per-class ceilings plus bonuses for option match, profile grounding, and reasoning quality
Two-phase form context — instant profile and learned-answer matches in <100 ms, LLM second pass for the rest
MV3 keep-alive — Port-based 20 s heartbeat prevents service-worker termination mid-apply
Overlay “Why?” column — every answer shows the LLM’s one-line reasoning so you can review with full context
PDF resume generation rewrite — modern fpdf2 API, per-section try/except, base-resume fallback when tailoring fails

Security hardening, accessibility, and UI polish

Security headers — Added CSP, X-Frame-Options, X-Content-Type-Options, Permissions-Policy, and HSTS with preload to all frontend pages
Dependency audit — Patched 5 npm vulnerabilities (Vite path traversal, picomatch ReDoS) to zero
Rate limiting fix — Per-client IP rate limiting now works correctly behind nginx reverse proxy
Open redirect fix — Blocked potential open redirect via job apply log URLs
Migration import hardened — Import now uses an allowlist instead of a blocklist for localStorage keys
Dead code removal — Removed 3,200+ lines of unused code, reducing main bundle by 140 KB (29%)
Branded favicon — Replaced default React favicon with the Applydrop brand mark

Accessibility and UX improvements

Keyboard accessibility — Added focus-visible outlines, skip-to-content links, and nav landmarks across all pages
Reduced motion — All 12 CSS animations respect prefers-reduced-motion system preference
Error boundary — Lazy-loaded views now show a branded recovery screen instead of white-screening on errors
Match badges — Added status icons alongside colors for colorblind-friendly score differentiation
SSE reconnect — Live progress feed now uses exponential backoff (5s→30s) instead of fixed 5s retries
Inline error messages — Job feedback failures now show visible inline errors instead of failing silently
Client-side validation — URL validation on Quick Add, 5 MB file size check on resume upload

Website enhancements

Site footer — Added full navigation footer to homepage (Product, Guides, Legal sections)
Cross-page navigation — Added persistent nav bar across About, Pricing, Security, Contact, Terms, Privacy pages
Pricing tiers — Added placeholder Free / Pro / Enterprise tier cards
Contact form — Added name/email/message form to the Contact page
Legal page readability — Added alternating section backgrounds to Terms and Privacy pages
SEO improvements — Added missing og:image:alt, twitter:image:alt, llms.txt links, and BreadcrumbList hints
PWA manifest — Added id, scope, description, categories, and maskable icon support

Backend improvements

Transaction safety — Job insert loops now use explicit SQLite transactions (BEGIN IMMEDIATE / COMMIT)
Sector relevance engine — Deterministic classifier, scoring composition, backfill worker, correction endpoint (behind feature flags)
Saved searches API — CRUD endpoints for saved job search filters with email alert support
Recommendations API — Similar jobs, liked companies, and unexplored sectors suggestions
Daily matches cron — Scheduled digest builder with email notification support
Events API — User engagement tracking (view, save, apply, click events)