santifer--career-ops/docs/FREE_TIER.md

Career-Ops on the Free Tier (Antigravity CLI)

career-ops works with Antigravity CLI's free tier — no API key or paid subscription required. This guide covers setup, limits, and trade-offs.

Quick Start

1. Install Antigravity CLI:

   On macOS / Linux:

   curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash
   

   On Windows (PowerShell):

   irm https://antigravity.google/cli/install.ps1 | iex
   

   On Windows (CMD):

   curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd
   

2. Authenticate with your Google account:

   Just run agy. If not already signed in, it checks the system keyring, then falls back to Google Sign-In (browser locally / URL + code over SSH).

3. Run career-ops as usual:

   agy          # interactive — paste a URL, evaluate, scan, etc.
   agy -p "..." # headless / batch mode
   

Daily Limits

The free tier has daily request and token caps set by Google. Typical limits (subject to change):

Resource	Approximate daily limit
Requests	1,000
Input tokens	~1 M
Output tokens	~100 K

Limits reset at midnight Pacific Time. If you hit a cap the CLI returns a rate-limit error; career-ops will pause and suggest retrying tomorrow.

Batch Mode Behavior

• batch-runner.sh spawns claude -p workers by default (Claude Code specific). To use Antigravity CLI workers instead, invoke them manually:

  agy -p "evaluate <URL>"
  

• With free-tier limits, keep --parallel 1 to avoid burning through your daily quota on parallel requests.

• Large batches (50+ offers) will likely span multiple days. Use --start-from to resume where you left off.

What Works Without Paying

Feature	Free tier	Notes
Offer evaluation (A-F)	✅	Full scoring pipeline
Report generation (.md)	✅	Markdown reports
Portal scanning	✅	Zero-token — hits APIs directly
PDF generation	✅	Uses local Playwright, no tokens
Batch processing	⚠️	Limited by daily quota

Upgrading

If you outgrow the free tier, you can switch to a paid Google AI plan or use Claude Code (claude CLI) with a Claude Max subscription. Both are fully supported — just authenticate with your preferred provider.