Market packs

Job Radar works in one market: the country you look for work in. The market decides how locations are read, which remote jobs are in scope, which local-language requirement is read from a posting, which currency salaries are compared in, and which job boards run. The data behind it (countries, regions, cities, rule phrases) lives in market packs, not in the code.

Choosing the market

data/profile/preferences.yaml:

market:
  pack: de            # a directory of config/packs/
  # country: DE       # home country (ISO 3166-1); default: the pack's
  # currency: EUR     # base currency (ISO 4217); default: the pack's
  # home_language: de # local language (ISO 639); default: the pack's

The same block is the Market section at the top of “What I want” on the profile page (/me). The generic pack names no country, currency or language, so with it all three must be set (pack: generic, country: US, currency: USD, home_language: en). A market that cannot be resolved (unknown pack, broken pack file, missing value) is not saved from the page; in a hand-edited file it stops every market step until it is fixed (there is no silent fallback).

Check what is in effect:

pnpm market:show        # pack, country, currency, language step on / off, channels of this market
pnpm config:check       # validates every pack and the market of preferences.yaml
pnpm run doctor --only config.market

What follows the market

Area	Behaviour
Locations	A location that names a country gets that country’s code (Remote - USA → US, Dublin, CA → US). The city before the home country’s name (Gütersloh, Germany) is read only in the home market.
Remote scope	none, home_country, worldwide, or {region: [eu, CH, …]} (named regions and ISO countries) in preferences.yaml and search.yaml. Old values: eu_hire_in_de = home_country, eu_any = {region: [eu]}.
Local language	When the pack has requirement rules for its language and home_language is that language, the level a posting requires is read and a level above yours (me.yaml languages) costs points (ai.yaml scoring.language_penalty). Otherwise the step is off: no level is read, nothing is deducted, the scoring prompt does not ask for it, and the pages hide its filter and badges.
Base currency	Salary floor, “minimum salary” filter, statistics and the high-pay threshold are in the market’s currency. Amounts in other currencies are converted with pipeline.yaml salary.fx_pivot + fx_rates; an amount in a currency without a rate is never compared.
Channels	A channel with markets: [DE] in sources.yaml runs only in those markets; elsewhere it is shown folded under “Other markets” and is not counted as a failure. Country parameters left empty (country, country_name, country_indeed) and remote-location keys left out follow the market.

After changing the market, new postings follow it right away. Jobs already stored keep what they were given until you run pnpm reprocess.

Pack layout

A pack is a directory config/packs/<id>/ (shipped). A copy in data/config/packs/<id>/ replaces the shipped pack as a whole (product updates of that pack then no longer apply; pnpm run doctor reminds you). Only pack.yaml is required.

File	Contents
pack.yaml	id (= directory name), name, and the market defaults: country, currency, language, locale (letter case of place names), region (the named region the country belongs to), default_channels (the job boards of this market: the wizard lists them with a “local” mark and /me offers to “turn them on”; scraping channels such as StepStone or XING are never switched on by it without your confirmation, see sources.md).
geography.yaml	countries (code, English name, optional currency the setup wizard proposes for the country, aliases, indeed name, optional pattern, match: false for names that are common words), regions (name, countries, patterns), cities (spelling → canonical name + country), subdivision_codes (US: [TX, NY, …]), non_city_labels, non_city_words, city_aliases, metro_areas, metro_regions, country_level_patterns, transliterations.
language.yaml	stopwords per language (to tell a description’s language) and requirement: the rules that read the required level (word_pattern, cefr_name_pattern, cefr_connectors, level_rules, optional_patterns, not_required_patterns, …, prompt_examples for the scoring prompt).
rules.yaml	Language-specific pieces of pipeline.yaml: company.legal_suffixes / agency_names, agency.*_patterns, contract.*, salary.currencies (how currencies are written), filter.generic_location_patterns, filter.remote.*; closed_posting.phrases: sentences (regex, case-insensitive; only the safe subset described under “Recheck of watched jobs” in configuration.md: no *, + or {n,}) on a posting page that say it no longer takes applications, used by the recheck of starred / followed jobs (see usage.md “Closed jobs”).

The generic pack is always loaded: the world country table, the regions eu, eea, europe, dach, nordics, the city table, US state codes and English rules. The market’s own pack is added on top.

How the effective pipeline config is built

The code reads pipeline.yaml together with the packs (loadPipeline()):

• lists: your pipeline.yaml entries first, then generic, then the market’s pack, duplicates removed;
• maps (city_aliases, metro_areas, …): your keys win over the pack’s;
• language.requirement: the whole block comes from the market’s pack (the order of its rules matters); a language.requirement in your pipeline.yaml replaces it;
• salary.local_currencies: left out = the market’s currency;
• closed_posting.phrases: generic’s and the market pack’s lists united; your own go in ui.yaml (job_checks.closed_recheck.extra_phrases), not in pipeline.yaml.

So pipeline.yaml keeps only what you add yourself. The config migration of pipeline.yaml removed the entries that are now in the packs.

Writing a pack

1. Copy config/packs/de/ to data/config/packs/<id>/ and set id, name, country, currency, language, locale, region, default_channels in pack.yaml.
2. geography.yaml: the home country’s metro areas, the texts that name only the country, transliterations of letters that sources drop. Countries and regions come from generic; add a country here only when the table lacks it.
3. language.yaml: stopwords of the language and, if you want the local-language step, a requirement block. Without it the step stays off.
4. rules.yaml: legal-form suffixes, agency and contract phrases, how the currency is written, and the “no longer accepting applications” sentences of the language (closed_posting.phrases; keep them specific: a hit marks a job possibly closed).
5. Set market.pack: <id> and run pnpm config:check, pnpm market:show, then pnpm reprocess.
6. To see what changed: pnpm market:regress snapshot --out before.json before, the same with after.json after the reprocess, then pnpm market:regress compare before.json after.json. It prints counts per field and code-value changes (country, level, filter reason), never job text.

Database column names

The columns keep their names; their meaning is now “the local language of the market”:

Column	Meaning
jobs.german_level_required	Level of the local language the posting requires (none, preferred, A1…C2, unknown)
scores.german_penalty	Points taken off for the local language
scores.german_level, german_level_ai, german_level_source	Level used for the deduction, the AI’s reading, how it was settled

Salaries in jobs.salary_json and T1 signals carry basePerYear + baseCurrency; rows written while the base was always EUR are read as EUR.

Renamed configuration keys

The config migrations (pnpm config:migrate --write) rename them; old files keep working in memory until then.

File	Before	Now
preferences.yaml	salary_floor_eur_year	salary_floor_year, plus market
preferences.yaml, search.yaml	remote_scope: eu_hire_in_de / eu_any	home_country / {region: [eu]}
sources.yaml	remote_locations.eu_hire_in_de / eu_any	home_country / region; German boards get markets: [DE]
pipeline.yaml	language.german_*, salary.fx_to_eur	the DE pack’s requirement; salary.fx_pivot: EUR + fx_rates
ai.yaml	scoring.german_penalty, priority.weights.german_gap	language_penalty, language_gap
insights.yaml	salary_bucket_eur, salary_bucket_cap_eur	salary_bucket, salary_bucket_cap
interests.yaml	amount category amount.min_annual_eur, amount.rough_fx_to_eur; saved views filters.hideGerman	amount.min_annual, amount.rough_fx (base currency); filters.hideLang

amount.assume_currency (the currency of an amount that names none) may be market: the market’s base currency. The /jobs and Today URLs use hideLang; old links with hideGerman still work.