Cv Tailor

CV Tailor

Turns a job description into a one-page LaTeX CV and a matching cover letter, compiled and verified. Every claim traces to facts.md.

Prerequisites

• tectonic — the LaTeX engine. brew install tectonic, or see tectonic-typesetting.github.io. It is a single binary with no TeX Live install, and it runs with shell-escape disabled, which is why this skill uses it rather than pdflatex.
• pdftotext (poppler) — for the ATS verification pass. brew install poppler.
• facts.md and profile.yml in the working directory. Scaffold them from examples/ if missing. Do not proceed without them.

Load first, every build

1. The jd-analyser output. Build from its positioning brief, never from your own read of the JD. Skipping this is how a trainee role gets mis-built as a specialist role.
2. facts.md, including its Evidence Index and every caveat in it.
3. profile.yml for constraints and exclusions.
4. The human-voice skill — load it, every build, before writing a single bullet. It covers CVs as well as prose. Working from memory is the documented failure mode here, not a theoretical one.

Non-negotiables

• Never fabricate. Only facts present in facts.md. No invented metrics, employers, or dates.
• Never write a gap-disclosure sentence into the CV or cover letter. Gaps get tracked internally, in the report, for the user's own judgement. They never appear on the page the employer reads. When a JD exposes a real gap, the fix is to find a genuine stronger proof point, not to write an apologetic paragraph.
• Never submit. This skill does not click Apply or Send, ever.
• One page unless the user explicitly asks otherwise.
• No hidden text. No white text, no zero-opacity layers, no off-page keyword stuffing. Current ATS platforms flag this as fraud, and it will end the application.
• Compile with tectonic. Never \uppercase inside titlesec — it breaks under tectonic. Use \scshape.
• Result over template. Every bullet needs a real outcome and a real number where facts.md supports one. What is not required is that every bullet wear the same grammar. Applying one sentence formula literally across a whole role produces exactly the uniform cadence that reads as machine-written. Within each role, at least one bullet must break the shape.
• Keyword placement, not just presence. The JD's top two or three terms belong in the profile line and the first bullet of the most relevant role. ATS scoring weights that placement higher than the same keyword buried in the last line of page one.

Workflow

1. Quick score first. One line, out of 5, with the reason. Wait for a go-ahead before building.
2. Run jd-analyser. Take its positioning brief as the spec.
3. Copy the template, do not start from scratch:

   cp assets/cv-template.tex             cv-<company-slug>.tex
   cp assets/cover-letter-template.tex   cl-<company-slug>.tex
   

4. Fill from facts.md. Mirror the JD's exact wording only where real evidence backs it. Mark anything unsupported as a gap in your report to the user; never invent evidence to close one.
5. Compile:

   tectonic cv-<company-slug>.tex
   tectonic cl-<company-slug>.tex
   

6. Verify with the pass below. Never ship a document that fails it.
7. Report exact filenames, compiler result, each verification result, and any honest gaps. State the numbers: "1 page, all six headings found, 0 hidden characters, 4/4 JD terms backed."

ATS verification pass

An ATS does not see your layout. It sees pdftotext output. Verify against that, not against how the PDF looks.

PDF=cv-<company-slug>.pdf

# 0. Page count — must be 1
pdfinfo "$PDF" | grep '^Pages:'

# 1. Extraction must not be empty (a CV built from images scores zero)
pdftotext "$PDF" - | wc -w

# 2. Name, email and phone must appear in the first few lines
pdftotext "$PDF" - | head -5

# 3. Standard headings present and in order
pdftotext "$PDF" - | grep -inE '^(education|experience|projects|skills|languages|certifications)'

# 4. Hidden or zero-width characters — must be 0
pdftotext "$PDF" - | grep -cP '[\x{200B}-\x{200D}\x{FEFF}\x{00AD}]'

# 5. Layout vs plain extraction must agree in word count (a big gap means
#    multi-column or table layout the parser will scramble)
A=$(pdftotext "$PDF" - | wc -w); B=$(pdftotext -layout "$PDF" - | wc -w)
echo "plain=$A layout=$B delta=$((A-B))"

# 6. No language claimed above the level recorded in facts.md
pdftotext "$PDF" - | grep -inE '(fluent|bilingual|native|C1|C2|B2)'

Then run the human-voice Part 2 pre-ship scan on the same PDF.

Read the matches, never the exit code. grep | sort -u exits 0 on empty input, so chaining && echo FAIL fires either way. Look at the output.

Interpreting check 5: a large delta means the parser is reading your columns as interleaved text. Tab-aligned dates are fine for text search but can confuse portal autofill widgets that infer structured fields from layout. If a portal is Workday- or SuccessFactors-shaped, consider supplying a plain .docx alongside the PDF, with dates stacked rather than tab-aligned.

Design pattern

The bundled template follows the conventions that survive ATS parsing:

• lmodern, single column, no tables in the body, no text boxes, no headers or footers
• Contact row hyperlinked, but never a bare URL printed as visible text
• Small-caps section headings with a rule underneath, standard heading names
• Dark, mid, and light greys only — colour that survives a black-and-white print
• Tight but not cramped spacing; one page is a constraint, not a target to overflow

Edit the template's variables at the top. Do not restructure the body unless you have a reason you can state.

Assets

• assets/cv-template.tex — one-page CV skeleton
• assets/cover-letter-template.tex — matching cover letter

Both are plain LaTeX source. Read them before running them, as you should with any file that goes through a typesetter.