diff --git a/app/(dashboard)/candidates/api/parse-cv/route.ts b/app/(dashboard)/candidates/api/parse-cv/route.ts
index fc5e84a..044a05e 100644
--- a/app/(dashboard)/candidates/api/parse-cv/route.ts
+++ b/app/(dashboard)/candidates/api/parse-cv/route.ts
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
 import { NextRequest, NextResponse } from "next/server";
-// @ts-ignore
-import pdf from "pdf-parse";
+import { PDFParse } from "pdf-parse";
 
 export async function POST(request: NextRequest) {
   try {
@@ -17,9 +16,11 @@ export async function POST(request: NextRequest) {
       const arrayBuffer = await file.arrayBuffer();
       const buffer = Buffer.from(arrayBuffer);
       
-      // Extract text from PDF
-      const pdfData = await pdf(buffer);
+      // Extract text from PDF using PDFParse v2 API
+      const parser = new PDFParse({ data: buffer });
+      const pdfData = await parser.getText();
       const text = pdfData.text;
+      await parser.destroy();
 
       // Extract candidate name from file name (strip extension)
       const name = file.name.replace(/\.[^/.]+$/, "");
@@ -75,8 +76,9 @@ export async function POST(request: NextRequest) {
       message: "CVs processed and forwarded to n8n successfully",
       data: responseData,
     });
-  } catch (error: any) {
+  } catch (error: unknown) {
     console.error("Error in parse-cv route:", error);
-    return NextResponse.json({ error: error.message || "Internal server error" }, { status: 500 });
+    const errorMessage = error instanceof Error ? error.message : "Internal server error";
+    return NextResponse.json({ error: errorMessage }, { status: 500 });
   }
 }
diff --git a/components/DataCard.tsx b/components/DataCard.tsx
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fa9b26b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/components/DataCard.tsx
@@ -0,0 +1,17 @@
+import React from "react";
+
+interface DataCardProps {
+  title: string;
+  description: string;
+  children?: React.ReactNode;
+}
+
+export function DataCard({ title, description, children }: DataCardProps) {
+  return (
+    <div className="bg-white p-6 rounded-lg shadow-sm border border-slate-50">
+      <h3 className="text-lg font-bold text-slate-900 mb-1">{title}</h3>
+      <p className="text-slate-600 text-sm mb-4">{description}</p>
+      {children}
+    </div>
+  );
+}
diff --git a/components/PrimaryButton.tsx b/components/PrimaryButton.tsx
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..2bf8bdf
--- /dev/null
+++ b/components/PrimaryButton.tsx
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+import React from "react";
+
+interface PrimaryButtonProps extends React.ButtonHTMLAttributes<HTMLButtonElement> {
+  children: React.ReactNode;
+}
+
+export function PrimaryButton({ children, className = "", ...props }: PrimaryButtonProps) {
+  return (
+    <button
+      className={`bg-blue-600 hover:bg-blue-700 text-white font-medium py-2 px-4 rounded-md shadow-sm transition-colors text-sm ${className}`}
+      {...props}
+    >
+      {children}
+    </button>
+  );
+}
diff --git a/components/StatusBadge.tsx b/components/StatusBadge.tsx
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..52ff158
--- /dev/null
+++ b/components/StatusBadge.tsx
@@ -0,0 +1,20 @@
+import React from "react";
+
+interface StatusBadgeProps {
+  label: string;
+  variant?: "primary" | "secondary";
+}
+
+export function StatusBadge({ label, variant = "primary" }: StatusBadgeProps) {
+  return (
+    <span
+      className={`inline-flex items-center px-2.5 py-0.5 rounded-full text-xs font-medium ${
+        variant === "primary"
+          ? "bg-blue-600 text-white"
+          : "bg-slate-50 text-slate-600"
+      }`}
+    >
+      {label}
+    </span>
+  );
+}
diff --git a/docs/discovery-and-scope.md b/docs/discovery-and-scope.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..955c8ad
--- /dev/null
+++ b/docs/discovery-and-scope.md
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+# Phase 1: Discovery & Scope
+
+This document establishes the business boundaries, user personas, backlog of user stories, and Definition of Done (DoD) for the AI Recruitment Platform.
+
+## User Personas
+
+*   **Technical Recruiter**: Focuses on sourcing, intake, initial AI-assisted screening, seniority verification, and tracking candidates through the hiring pipeline.
+*   **Hiring Manager**: Focuses on reviewing pre-screened and scored candidates, evaluating role suitability, and conducting structured interviews.
+*   **Candidate**: Interacts with the platform to submit applications/CVs and receives automated status updates.
+
+## Prioritized Backlog of User Stories
+
+1.  **CV Intake**
+    *   *User Story*: As a recruiter, I want to upload candidate PDFs via the Web UI so they can be processed and stored.
+    *   *Acceptance Criteria*:
+        *   Drag-and-drop or file selector for PDF CVs.
+        *   Successful text extraction and ingestion.
+        *   Parsing and storage of extracted candidate info.
+2.  **Semantic Ranking**
+    *   *User Story*: As a recruiter, I want a ranked list of candidates matching an open job description based on contextual relevance.
+    *   *Acceptance Criteria*:
+        *   Compute cosine distance between job embeddings and candidate embeddings.
+        *   Display ranked matches with normalized similarity score between -1 and 1.
+3.  **Profile Summary**
+    *   *User Story*: As a recruiter, I want a terse AI-generated candidate summary to speed up screening.
+    *   *Acceptance Criteria*:
+        *   Display a short summary on candidate profiles.
+        *   Synthesized from parsed resume details.
+4.  **Seniority Guard**
+    *   *User Story*: As a recruiter, I want automatic seniority detection to route candidates to the correct interview pool.
+    *   *Acceptance Criteria*:
+        *   AI-based classification (e.g., Junior, Mid, Senior).
+        *   Correct pool routing matches candidate seniority level.
+5.  **Unified Scoring**
+    *   *User Story*: As a hiring manager, I want to compare candidate suitability using a standardized score.
+    *   *Acceptance Criteria*:
+        *   Standardized scoring schema with AI evaluation.
+        *   JSON structure containing keys: `summary`, `classification`, `suggestions`, and `riskLevel`.
+6.  **Stage Progression**
+    *   *User Story*: As a recruiter, I want candidate stages to update dynamically, triggering confirmation emails.
+    *   *Acceptance Criteria*:
+        *   Visual stage progression pipeline.
+        *   Updating stage triggers background event notifications.
+
+## Definition of Done (DoD)
+
+*   **Type Safety**: Fully typed Next.js App Router with TypeScript (no `any` types where avoidable).
+*   **Database Schema**: Supabase relational database schema complete with verified `pgvector` distance metrics.
+*   **Linting & Quality**: Zero TypeScript compilation or linting warnings/errors.
+*   **Git Quality Gates**: Active Git quality gates (hooks) verifying builds, conventional commit messages, linting, and formatting.
diff --git a/eslint.config.mjs b/eslint.config.mjs
index 05e726d..5610352 100644
--- a/eslint.config.mjs
+++ b/eslint.config.mjs
@@ -12,6 +12,7 @@ const eslintConfig = defineConfig([
     "out/**",
     "build/**",
     "next-env.d.ts",
+    "scripts/**",
   ]),
 ]);
 
diff --git a/lib/logger/index.ts b/lib/logger/index.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d0e2a44
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lib/logger/index.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+export interface LogPayload {
+  message: string;
+  error?: Error | unknown;
+  latencyMs?: number;
+  metadata?: Record<string, unknown>;
+}
+
+export class Logger {
+  private static format(level: "INFO" | "WARN" | "ERROR", payload: LogPayload): string {
+    const timestamp = new Date().toISOString();
+    const parts: string[] = [`[${timestamp}] [${level}] ${payload.message}`];
+
+    if (payload.latencyMs !== undefined) {
+      parts.push(`(Latency: ${payload.latencyMs}ms)`);
+    }
+
+    if (payload.error) {
+      const errorMsg =
+        payload.error instanceof Error
+          ? payload.error.stack || payload.error.message
+          : String(payload.error);
+      parts.push(`\nError: ${errorMsg}`);
+    }
+
+    if (payload.metadata && Object.keys(payload.metadata).length > 0) {
+      parts.push(`\nMetadata: ${JSON.stringify(payload.metadata, null, 2)}`);
+    }
+
+    return parts.join(" ");
+  }
+
+  static info(message: string, metadata?: Record<string, unknown>, latencyMs?: number) {
+    console.log(this.format("INFO", { message, metadata, latencyMs }));
+  }
+
+  static warn(message: string, metadata?: Record<string, unknown>, latencyMs?: number) {
+    console.warn(this.format("WARN", { message, metadata, latencyMs }));
+  }
+
+  static error(
+    message: string,
+    error?: Error | unknown,
+    metadata?: Record<string, unknown>,
+    latencyMs?: number
+  ) {
+    console.error(this.format("ERROR", { message, error, metadata, latencyMs }));
+  }
+}
diff --git a/supabase/migrations/20260608000000_initial_schema.sql b/supabase/migrations/20260608000000_initial_schema.sql
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..524484b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/supabase/migrations/20260608000000_initial_schema.sql
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+-- Enable pgvector extension
+CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS vector;
+
+-- Recruiters table
+CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS recruiters (
+  id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+  name TEXT NOT NULL,
+  email TEXT NOT NULL UNIQUE,
+  created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT now() NOT NULL
+);
+
+-- Jobs table
+CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS jobs (
+  id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+  title TEXT NOT NULL,
+  requirements JSONB NOT NULL,
+  embedding vector(1536),
+  recruiter_id UUID REFERENCES recruiters(id) ON DELETE SET NULL,
+  created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT now() NOT NULL
+);
+
+-- Candidates table
+CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS candidates (
+  id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+  name TEXT NOT NULL,
+  contact_info JSONB NOT NULL,
+  embedding vector(1536),
+  created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT now() NOT NULL
+);
+
+-- Interviews table
+CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS interviews (
+  id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+  candidate_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES candidates(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+  job_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES jobs(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+  interview_date TIMESTAMPTZ NOT NULL,
+  stage TEXT NOT NULL, -- Technical, Cultural, etc.
+  feedback TEXT,
+  created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT now() NOT NULL
+);
+
+-- Scores table
+CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS scores (
+  id UUID PRIMARY KEY DEFAULT gen_random_uuid(),
+  candidate_id UUID NOT NULL REFERENCES candidates(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+  interview_id UUID REFERENCES interviews(id) ON DELETE CASCADE,
+  ai_score FLOAT NOT NULL,
+  evaluation JSONB NOT NULL, -- Hold summary, classification, suggestions, riskLevel
+  created_at TIMESTAMPTZ DEFAULT now() NOT NULL,
+  CONSTRAINT check_evaluation_schema CHECK (
+    evaluation ? 'summary' AND
+    evaluation ? 'classification' AND
+    evaluation ? 'suggestions' AND
+    evaluation ? 'riskLevel'
+  )
+);
+
+-- Cosine distance match function
+CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION match_candidates(
+  query_embedding vector(1536),
+  match_threshold float,
+  match_count int
+)
+RETURNS TABLE (
+  id uuid,
+  name text,
+  contact_info jsonb,
+  embedding vector(1536),
+  similarity float
+)
+LANGUAGE plpgsql
+AS $$
+BEGIN
+  RETURN QUERY
+  SELECT
+    candidates.id,
+    candidates.name,
+    candidates.contact_info,
+    candidates.embedding,
+    (1 - (candidates.embedding <=> query_embedding))::float AS similarity
+  FROM candidates
+  WHERE (1 - (candidates.embedding <=> query_embedding)) > match_threshold
+  ORDER BY similarity DESC
+  LIMIT match_count;
+END;
+$$;
diff --git a/tailwind.config.ts b/tailwind.config.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..19cdb13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tailwind.config.ts
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+import type { Config } from "tailwindcss";
+
+const config: Config = {
+  content: [
+    "./app/**/*.{js,ts,jsx,tsx,mdx}",
+    "./components/**/*.{js,ts,jsx,tsx,mdx}",
+  ],
+  theme: {
+    // Overriding the default theme colors to restrict to the whitelist.
+    colors: {
+      transparent: "transparent",
+      current: "currentColor",
+      white: "#ffffff",
+      slate: {
+        50: "#f8fafc",
+        600: "#475569",
+        900: "#0f172a",
+      },
+      blue: {
+        600: "#2563eb",
+        700: "#1d4ed8",
+      },
+    },
+  },
+  plugins: [],
+};
+
+export default config;
diff --git a/types.d.ts b/types.d.ts
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc56143
--- /dev/null
+++ b/types.d.ts
@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+declare module 'pdf-parse';