render-resume

Compile a resume .tex (default: the scratchpad tailored.tex) to PDF. Deterministic — no tailoring decisions happen here.

Input

• Path to a .tex (default: tailored.tex in the scratchpad; falls back to the working master, master.tex in the scratchpad or ./resume/main.tex, if asked to render the master).

Engine fidelity — important

This resume is authored for pdfLaTeX (\pdfgentounicode for ATS + roboto Type1 fonts). latexmk (→ pdflatex) renders it faithfully and needs no shim — prefer it. Tectonic runs XeTeX and does NOT render this resume correctly: it crashes on fontawesome5, lacks the pdfTeX ATS primitives, and falls back from Roboto to a Computer Modern serif. render.sh auto-shims tectonic so it at least produces a PDF, but treat that as a rough preview only — the final PDF the user submits should come from pdflatex/latexmk (or Overleaf). Tell the user this if only tectonic is available.

The page budget

apply-kit does not force a one-page resume. The budget is the master resume's own page count, so a two- or three-page senior/staff/manager master stays that long and a one-page master stays one page. A tailored copy may come in shorter than the budget; it may never come in longer.

Before rendering a tailored resume, read the budget from the .page-budget file next to the source master (written by ingest-resume) and pass it as the script's second argument. If that file does not exist, ask the user how many pages their master is, write the answer there, then render. Rendering the master itself needs no argument: the script measures it and records the real count.

Procedure

1. Run the bundled render script, "${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR}/scripts/render.sh" <tex-file> [page-budget] (when installed as a plugin, ${CLAUDE_SKILL_DIR} resolves to this skill's directory; if that variable is unset, fall back to scripts/render.sh relative to this skill). It:
   • detects latexmk (preferred, faithful), else tectonic (preview-only, see fidelity note), else pdflatex/xelatex;
   • for tectonic, compiles a shimmed throwaway copy; other engines use the file as-is;
   • compiles in the file's directory and prints the PDF path;
   • enforces the page budget: parses the TeX log for the page count and exits non-zero (code 5) if the resume ran longer than the budget. The budget is the second argument, else a .page-budget file next to the .tex, else 1.
2. If no TeX engine is found, the script exits non-zero with install guidance. Relay it: on macOS, brew install --cask mactex-no-gui (full, includes latexmk) or brew install tectonic (lightweight, auto-fetches packages). If the user only ever compiles on Overleaf, don't push a local install — just hand them the tailored .tex path to upload.
3. On compile error, read the .log, quote the first real error (the line after ! ) and the offending source line, and propose a fix. Common causes here: unescaped specials (& % $ # _) introduced during tailoring, or a missing package (roboto, fontawesome5) — tectonic auto-fetches these; a minimal TeX install may not have them.

Output

• Report the PDF path so the user can open/download it.
• Offer to open it (open <pdf> on macOS).

Guardrails

• Local and deterministic. Compilation happens locally via render.sh. Never upload the .tex or .pdf to any external service; if the user wants Overleaf, hand them the local path to upload themselves.
• No content decisions here. This skill compiles; it does not edit or invent resume content. If the build fails, fix LaTeX syntax only — never alter the meaning of a bullet to make it compile.
• Keep outputs private — PDFs land in the scratchpad or the git-ignored applications/ folder, never committed. See GUARDRAILS.md.