resume-builder

Overview

Turn structured career data into a clean, professional resume rendered as HTML and exported to PDF. The skill owns the data model, three visual templates, and two PDF backends so the agent produces a consistent artifact regardless of the user's environment.

When to Use

• The user supplies (or asks the agent to draft) a resume from facts: jobs, education, skills, projects, certifications, contact info.
• The user has a YAML/JSON resume and wants a styled HTML page or a PDF.
• The user wants to re-theme an existing resume (minimal / modern / classic) without re-typing content.
• The user needs a portable, ATS-friendly document for job applications.

Do not use this skill for:

• Cover letters (single narrative prose) — that is a different artifact.
• Full CVs with publications/grants requiring a two-column academic layout (the classic template can approximate it, but flag the limitation).
• Free-form un-structured prompts with no data — first collect data (see Input Format), then render.

Input Format

The skill consumes one structured document. Prefer YAML for hand-authoring; accept JSON interchangeably. The canonical schema:

basics:
  name: "Alex"
  label: "Senior Software Engineer"
  email: "monica@example.com"
  phone: "+1 555 0100"
  url: "https://monica.example.com"
  location: "Berlin, Germany"
  summary: "Engineer focused on distributed systems and developer tooling."
sections:
  work:
    - company: "Acme Corp"
      position: "Staff Engineer"
      start: "2021-03"
      end: "2024-06"
      location: "Remote"
      highlights:
        - "Led migration of the billing service to event-driven architecture."
        - "Cut p99 latency 40% by introducing a read-through cache."
  education:
    - institution: "TU Berlin"
      area: "Computer Science"
      degree: "M.Sc."
      start: "2016"
      end: "2018"
  skills:
    - "Go"
    - "Kubernetes"
    - "Distributed Systems"
  projects:
    - name: "openmetrics-cli"
      description: "A tiny Prometheus exporter toolkit."
      url: "https://github.com/monica/openmetrics-cli"
  certifications:
    - name: "CKA"
      issuer: "CNCF"
      date: "2022"

Rules the agent must enforce:

• basics.name and at least one sections.work or sections.education entry are required; everything else is optional and omitted if absent.
• Dates use ISO YYYY or YYYY-MM. Render ranges as 2021-03 – 2024-06; an open-ended role uses Present for a missing end.
• highlights are bullet points; keep each to one line, action-verb led.
• Unknown top-level keys are ignored, not erroring.

Template Options

Three bundled, dependency-light CSS templates. The agent picks based on the user's stated preference or defaults to modern.

• minimal — single column, generous whitespace, hairline rules, neutral sans-serif. Best for engineering and design roles; fastest to scan.
• modern — accent color header band, two-tone palette, subtle typographic scale. Good general-purpose default.
• classic — serif body, ruled section headers, traditional chronology. Best for finance, law, academia-adjacent roles.

Each template is a self-contained <style> block plus semantic HTML, so the rendered page works offline and prints predictably. The agent sets the accent color and font stack via CSS custom properties (see Customization).

PDF Generation

Two backends; pick whichever the user's machine can run.

weasyprint (recommended, headless-friendly)

pip install weasyprint
weasyprint resume.html resume.pdf

WeasyPrint renders HTML/CSS directly — no browser needed. It honors @page size, margins, and print-color-adjust: exact, so colors survive to PDF. Best when Chromium is unavailable.

puppeteer (best fidelity to screen CSS)

npm install puppeteer
node -e "const p=require('puppeteer');(async()=>{const b=await p.launch();const pg=await b.newPage();await pg.goto('file://'+process.cwd()+'/resume.html',{waitUntil:'networkidle0'});await pg.pdf({path:'resume.pdf',format:'A4',printBackground:true});await b.close();})()"

Puppeteer gives pixel-accurate output and supports web fonts. Slower to install and needs a Chromium download. Use when the user already has Node tooling.

Always generate the PDF from the final HTML with printBackground: true (puppeteer) or print-color-adjust: exact (weasyprint) so the template's background colors and rules appear.

HTML Output

The agent writes a single resume.html:

• One root <article class="resume template-<name>">.
• lang attribute set from basics locale or default en.
• Inline <style> in <head>; no external requests (fonts fall back to system stacks) so the file is portable.
• Contact links use mailto:/tel: and rel="noopener" on external url.
• Section order: summary → work → education → projects → skills → certifications. Sections with no data are dropped; the order is fixed for ATS consistency.

Customization

Drive appearance through CSS custom properties at :root so users restyle without touching markup:

:root{
  --accent:#2563eb;
  --ink:#111827;
  --paper:#ffffff;
  --font-sans: "Inter", system-ui, sans-serif;
  --font-serif: "Georgia", serif;
  --space: 0.75rem;
}

• Recolor: set --accent. For classic, also set --font-body: var(--font-serif).
• Page size: override @page { size: A4; margin: 14mm; } (Letter for US users).
• Multi-page: templates are fluid; long resumes paginate automatically. Add break-inside: avoid on .entry to keep a role's block together.
• One-page coercion: if the user demands one page, shrink --space and font sizes, trim summary, and cap highlights to 3–4 per role rather than dropping sections.

Common Pitfalls

1. Missing end date rendered as blank. Always render Present for an open-ended role — never leave the date range blank.
2. WeasyPrint missing system libs. On minimal Linux images, Pango/cairo aren't present — install libpango-1.0-0 libpangocairo-1.0-0 libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 first, or fall back to puppeteer.
3. Fonts not embedded in PDF. Web fonts loaded via <link> may not print — use system font stacks, or inline @font-face only if the user supplies font files.
4. Print background stripped. Without printBackground:true (puppeteer) or print-color-adjust:exact (weasyprint), accent bands disappear — the #1 "my PDF looks blank" bug.
5. ATS parsing broken by layout. Text-in-images or heavy two-column sidebars can confuse ATS parsers — the minimal/modern templates are ATS-safe; flag the risk if the user demands a dense two-column layout.
6. Non-ISO dates left unnormalized. Convert Mar 2021 → 2021-03 before rendering, or date ranges sort/display incorrectly.
7. Long URLs in highlights breaking layout. Wrap or shorten raw URLs in bullet points rather than letting them overflow the line.
8. Over-styling to force one page. Don't shrink below 9pt to fit — trim summary and cap highlights to 3-4 per role instead.

Verification Checklist

• Required fields present: basics.name and at least one work or education entry
• All dates rendered as YYYY-MM ranges (or Present for open-ended roles), no raw blanks
• Rendered HTML opens correctly with no external network requests (fonts/styles are self-contained)
• PDF export includes background colors/accent bands (printBackground/print-color-adjust was set)
• PDF page size matches the user's expected paper size (A4 vs Letter)
• Resume fits the requested page count without text below 9pt