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Posted on • Originally published at aissence.ai

From Side Project to Career Platform: Building AissenceAI

#startup #entrepreneurship #ai

From Side Project to Career Platform: Building AissenceAI

AissenceAI started as a weekend project to solve a personal frustration: the gap between interview preparation and actual interview performance. Most candidates prepare extensively but freeze when facing unexpected questions in live interviews.

The Problem: Preparation Does Not Equal Performance

70% of candidates report anxiety during interviews. Practicing answers alone does not help when a curveball comes. I experienced this firsthand during a Google interview. After 3 months of prep, I froze when asked an unexpected system design question.

The First Prototype

The first version was a weekend hackathon: Next.js frontend + OpenAI API. Simple - paste a question, get an answer. The problem? 2-3 second response time. Completely unusable for live interviews.

Key insight: Speed is everything. The AI response needs to feel like your own thinking.

The 116ms Breakthrough

Getting to 116ms required rethinking the entire pipeline:

  1. Switched to streaming WebSocket architecture
  2. Multi-model routing (GPT-4o for behavioral, Claude for coding, Gemini for general)
  3. Pre-compiled context (resume + job description loaded at session start)
  4. Deepgram streaming STT instead of Whisper (50ms vs 500ms+)
  5. Character-by-character streaming

Read the technical deep dive on how we achieved 116ms.

Building the Desktop App with Tauri 2

Why Tauri over Electron?

  • 10MB vs 150MB app size
  • Native screen capture exclusion API for Stealth Mode
  • Rust backend for better audio processing performance
  • Security - no Node.js runtime, reduced attack surface

Download the AissenceAI desktop app.

From Interview Tool to Career Platform

Users kept asking for more. So we built 12 free career tools: Resume Builder, Cover Letter Generator, LinkedIn Optimizer, Job Tracker, Skill Quiz, Career Path Advisor, Auto Job Apply, Mock Interviews, and more.

Explore the full Career Launch Pad.

Lessons Learned

  1. Speed beats features - 116ms matters more than 50 integrations
  2. Free tools drive adoption - 12 free career tools create a PLG flywheel
  3. Community-driven development - Built by Users, for Users
  4. Stealth mode builds trust - users need confidence it is truly invisible

Try it free at aissence.ai - no credit card required.

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