Agent-operable ATS

The ATS your coding agent can use to keep hiring moving.

Yardstick is a structured-interview ATS your agent can use through the CLI, public API, or MCP. It puts interview plans, scorecards, and candidate evidence to work so recurring follow-through does not sit with your recruiter or hiring manager.

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Why hiring work gets stuck

Good hiring work is mostly follow-through.

The work that holds up a hiring loop is rarely mysterious. A scorecard arrives late, a recruiter has to chase it down, or a queue of applicants needs a first pass before the team can move. An agent-operable ATS turns the structured information already in your hiring process into work your agent can help carry forward.

Structured in. Job-specific interview plans, standardized questions, and required scorecards give the team a shared record instead of scattered notes and memory.

Useful work out. Because the context is already in Yardstick, an agent can prepare the next step instead of asking your team to rebuild the same hiring context in every prompt.

Yardstick keeps the role, candidate, interview plan, scorecard, and decision in one hiring system of record. Your agent reaches that record through the yardstick CLI, the public API, or an MCP server — then uses it to help the team get from one useful step to the next.

How it works

Your hiring data becomes useful work.

A role, interview plan, scorecard, and applicant review are much more useful when they live together. Your agent can start from that context, prepare the next step, and keep your team out of the repetitive coordination work that slows a hiring loop down.

1Start with the hiring work in front of youAsk your agent to draft a role, build an interview plan, prepare questions, or bring together the evidence from a hiring loop.
2Yardstick gives it the right contextThe agent works against the roles, plans, scorecards, and candidate evidence already in your hiring system of record.
3The next useful step is ready soonerInstead of rebuilding context or chasing information by hand, your team starts with prepared work and a shared record of what happened.
4Recipes keep recurring work from slippingFor the repetitive operations that hold up a hiring loop, a Recipe turns a configured workflow into timely follow-through.

Recipes in practice

Five ways to keep the hiring loop moving.

Recipes turn a real hiring bottleneck into a named next step. Each one starts from the hiring context already in Yardstick and puts prepared work where your team can use it.

Scorecards

Chase missing scorecards

A debrief cannot move on incomplete evidence. Yardstick sends configured reminders to interviewers who have not submitted feedback, then escalates missing feedback to the hiring manager at the final step.

Focused follow-through: these are direct reminders to missing-feedback interviewers, then the hiring manager — never candidate outreach, feedback edits, or reminders to people who opted out.

Screening

Screen new applicants nightly

Give the recruiting team a useful starting point for the next day. Yardstick reviews a configured number of new applicants and prepares rejection drafts for review when a candidate clearly does not meet the role's requirements.

A reviewable handoff: the run does not change a candidate's status or send candidate email by itself. Your team confirms the matching rejection before the existing draft moves into normal review, still unsent.

Interview prep

Prep interview kits for next week's sessions

Give each interviewer the context they need before the next session: candidate summary, role-specific questions, scorecard anchors, and logistics in one current kit.

Ready for the room: the kit prepares the conversation without changing the schedule or making a candidate decision.

Decision support

Prepare a panel decision brief

When the panel's assigned scorecards are complete, Yardstick turns the evidence into one shared starting point for the decision conversation.

Evidence, together: the brief synthesizes completed human evidence; it does not decide or change candidate status.

Candidate follow-through

Keep candidates informed

When an interviewed candidate is still waiting for an update, Yardstick prepares a bounded, candidate-specific follow-up draft so your team starts from context instead of a blank page.

A prepared draft: Email Automation remains the source of truth for the template, sender, review/send lifecycle, and audit record.

Prepared work, where it belongs

Start from the next useful step.

Recipes carry the repeatable preparation and follow-through so your team can spend its time interpreting evidence, making the call, and keeping the process moving.

Review drafts

Screening, decision, and candidate follow-through drafts open in the existing Email Drafts workflow.

Interviewer context

Kits and tasks give each interviewer the current context for the session ahead.

Team judgment

People review the prepared evidence and make the hiring call from a shared record.

Yardstick is a structured-interview ATS for humans and agents. Your agent reaches the same hiring record through the yardstick CLI, public API, or MCP, while the team keeps the context and outcomes connected. Learn more about the ATS for humans and agents or see the product's structured workflow.

When you're ready to see it on your own hiring, book a call.

FAQ

Common questions about agent-operable and headless ATS.

What is an agent-operable ATS?

An agent-operable ATS is a hiring system of record that a coding agent — like Claude Code or Codex — can work with through a CLI, public API, or MCP server. In Yardstick, that means the agent can use the same roles, interview plans, scorecards, and candidate evidence your hiring team uses to prepare useful work and keep follow-through moving.

What is a headless ATS?

Headless means the ATS can be driven through a CLI or public API rather than only through its own screens. Your coding agent or scripts can work with the same hiring system your team uses, instead of treating recruiting operations as a separate, manual workflow.

Can my coding agent operate the ATS via CLI?

Yes. Your agent connects through the yardstick CLI, public API, or MCP server. It can work with the hiring context in Yardstick to prepare roles, plans, questions, scorecards, and candidate evidence without making your team reconstruct that context in a separate prompt.

What do Recipes add?

Recipes turn recurring hiring moments into named outcomes: Chase missing scorecards sends configured interviewer reminders; Screen new applicants nightly prepares rejection drafts; Prep interview kits prepares interviewer context; Prepare a panel decision brief synthesizes completed scorecards; and Keep candidates informed prepares a bounded follow-up draft for team review.

Where does prepared work appear?

Prepared work appears in the workflow that owns it: scorecard reminders reach the configured reviewers, screening and candidate follow-through open in Email Drafts, decision briefs open in their review path, and interview kits meet the assigned interviewer in the kit and task workflow.

Does Keep candidates informed send candidate email automatically?

No. It prepares a bounded, candidate-specific draft for team review. Email Automation remains the source of truth for the template, sender, review/send lifecycle, and audit record.

Keep hiring work from stalling.

See how your agent runs the yardstick CLI to build interview plans, prepare scorecards, and turn recurring hiring work into a more reliable workflow.

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