Ambiguous submission outcomes should never be retried
Every retry policy you have ever configured treats a failed operation the same way: back off, try again, repeat until it succeeds. That reflex is correct for idempotent work — fetching a page, writing a log line, queueing a message. It is wrong for exactly one operation that job-application automation performs constantly: submitting. Submitting is not idempotent. Pressing "send" twice on an…
When job-application automation systems retry a failed submission, they risk creating duplicate applications for the same role, causing confusion and harm to candidates. These systems should instead mark ambiguous submits as UNKNOWN and never retry them, as retrying unknown submissions risks creating additional, unintended applications.
The system should require explicit confirmation to close an attempt, ensuring that only real applications are recorded. By following this rule, submission metrics become more accurate, and the risk of duplicate applications is eliminated.
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