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Learn more (plain version)

Curious what WorkWingman is built from, or want to learn to build something like it? Here are the main pieces in plain terms, each with a link to learn more. The full engineer link list is in ../technical/references.md.

The building blocks

  • Electron — turns web pages into a real desktop app. It's how WorkWingman becomes a window you open, not a website. → https://www.electronjs.org/
  • Angular — the toolkit for building the screens you click around in. → https://angular.dev
  • .NET — the engine running the "brain" that does the real work behind the scenes. → https://dotnet.microsoft.com/
  • Playwright — drives a real web browser automatically, which is how the app fills out applications while you watch. → https://playwright.dev/
  • KeePass — a password vault; a locked safe for your logins that stays on your computer. → https://keepassxc.org/

The services it connects to

  • Google (Gmail, Drive, Sheets, Calendar) → https://workspace.google.com/
  • Apple sign-in & calendar → https://developer.apple.com/sign-in-with-apple/
  • LinkedIn (your saved jobs) → https://www.linkedin.com/
  • Workday (where many big companies take applications) → https://www.workday.com/
  • Claude (the AI that writes your documents and study plans) → https://www.anthropic.com/
  • Gemini "Nano Banana" / OpenAI images / Magnific (optional, your own key, makes and sharpens study illustrations) → see study-visuals.md

Where the layoff-risk numbers come from today

  • SEC company filings — public companies have to tell the government about big layoffs and restructuring; that filing is public record. → https://www.sec.gov/
  • State WARN layoff notices — the law requires larger employers to give 60 days' notice before a mass layoff, and Texas publishes those notices as open data. → https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/layoffs/warn

Where a few in-progress features get their numbers

A handful of features aren't in the app yet but already have their data sources picked out and documented, so nothing is invented once they land:

  • Government pay & prices — the Bureau of Labor Statistics (wages and inflation), the Census Bureau (typical rents by area), the Department of Labor (visa-sponsorship wage filings, employee-benefits filings), and the Department of Energy (gas prices). All free, all public record. → https://www.bls.gov/developers/ · https://www.census.gov/data/developers.html
  • HUD Fair Market Rents — the government's own reference rents by bedroom count, the same numbers used for housing-assistance programs. → https://www.huduser.gov/portal/dataset/fmr-api.html
  • School quality data — a Stanford research project publishes school-district quality scores that are comparable nationwide (unlike each state's own test scores, which aren't apples-to-apples). → https://edopportunity.org/
  • USDA food-cost tables — the government's own official "how much does groceries cost a family this size" tables. → https://www.fna.usda.gov/research/cnpp/usda-food-plans/cost-food-monthly-reports
  • Stock prices & company news — free stock-quote sources and a free news-search project, used only to show what already happened (never a prediction). → https://stooq.com/ · https://www.gdeltproject.org/
  • GitHub — a company's public code repositories can hint at what programming languages they use. → https://github.com/
  • Wikipedia — a quick "what does this company do" summary. → https://www.wikipedia.org/
  • Some sources cost money and aren't used — a few well-known data providers (levels.fyi, Glassdoor, Zillow's live API, Numbeo, GreatSchools) either charge for access or don't allow automated use at all. WorkWingman is upfront about these as "not integrated" rather than scraping them against their rules or guessing at their numbers.

Where stock prices come from (for the equity-comp feature)

  • Stooq — free stock-price data, no sign-in needed. → https://stooq.com
  • Alpha Vantage — a free (small daily limit) stock-data service you can get your own key for. → https://www.alphavantage.co/documentation/

Places to study (the app suggests these per job)

  • Udemy → https://www.udemy.com
  • Google Cloud Skills Boost → https://www.cloudskillsboost.google
  • AWS Skill Builder → https://skillbuilder.aws
  • Microsoft Learn → https://learn.microsoft.com
  • LeetCode (coding practice) → https://leetcode.com
  • Coursera → https://www.coursera.org
  • Medium (articles) → https://medium.com

Optional data providers (bring your own key — see integration-keys)

  • Financial Modeling Prep (stock data, free tier) → https://site.financialmodelingprep.com/developer/docs
  • Alpha Vantage (backup stock data, free tier) → https://www.alphavantage.co/support/#api-key
  • GitHub personal access tokens (raises the API rate limit) → https://github.com/settings/tokens

Turning study notes into audio/video (planned)

  • ffmpeg — the free tool that mixes sound and builds video files. → https://ffmpeg.org/
  • Piper — a free, offline computer voice that reads your notes out loud, entirely on your own machine. → https://github.com/OHF-Voice/piper1-gpl
  • CC0 — a license meaning "free for anyone to use, for anything, no permission needed." All the music/rain/video clips this feature uses are CC0 or made fresh on your computer, never a copyrighted song someone else owns. → https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Places to prep for a coding test (when a job mentions one)

  • HackerRank → https://www.hackerrank.com/interview/interview-preparation-kit
  • Codility → https://app.codility.com/programmers/lessons/
  • CodeSignal → https://codesignal.com/learn/
  • Karat / Brilliant Black Minds (free mock interviews) → https://karat.com/bbm-members/

Plus a small, hand-picked "practice for this role" list — see learning-paths.md — with LeetCode courses/study plans and free platforms like Databricks, Snowflake, dbt Learn, and Kaggle Learn.

Phone flashcards (Prep Studio)

  • Web Speech API — the free, built-in text-to-speech every modern phone browser already has. No account, no app, no cost. → https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/SpeechSynthesis
  • Anki (optional, bring your own account) — a popular free flashcard app people use for memorization. → https://apps.ankiweb.net/
  • Quizlet (optional, bring your own account) — another popular flashcard/study site. → https://quizlet.com

Places to prep for the interview itself

  • Exponent (YouTube — PM/EM/software interview mock interviews) → https://www.youtube.com/@tryexponent
  • Exponent's Engineering Manager Interview Guide → https://www.tryexponent.com/blog/how-to-prepare-for-an-engineering-manager-interview
  • IGotAnOffer's Engineering Manager Interview Questions → https://igotanoffer.com/blogs/tech/engineering-manager-interviews
  • MIT's STAR Method guide → https://capd.mit.edu/resources/the-star-method-for-behavioral-interviews/
  • The Muse's STAR Method guide → https://www.themuse.com/advice/star-interview-method

Ideas worth knowing

  • Local-first — your data lives on your machine, not a company's servers. Learn why that matters: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
  • RAG / grounded AI workspaces — giving an AI just the right documents so its answers are grounded in your real materials. That's what a per-job "Claude study project" is. → https://www.anthropic.com/news/contextual-retrieval
  • Second-opinion code review — every change is checked by a reviewer before it's kept. It's the same reason you'd have someone proofread an important email.
  • Keeping software safe — the basics everyone should know: https://owasp.org/www-project-top-ten/