Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF (github.com)

I used this recently for my resume and I recommend it.

I have the technical background to write Latex and Typst documents but I honestly didn't want the headache. Plus I'm the type to futz with styling all day long instead of putting down actual content. RenderCV was simple to use and did exactly what I wanted.

A bit of a missed opportunity not to use the JSON Resume schema for this.

https://jsonresume.org/schema

Oh awesome! This is a great solution to resumes. The only thing I'd like more is a web app to run it in.

This looks really interesting, but I’m wondering what this adds that someone can’t already do with Typst+a resume template. The basic-resume template already abstracts enough that you only need to care about content rather than formatting:

https://typst.app/universe/package/basic-resume/

Does anyone have examples of how they’re using the YAML?

I’d love to know if this performs better than your average resume in OCR or scanning tools. I think if you could advertise that you follow some kind of arcane best practices, that would be super attractive to a lot of people.

I have a lot of anxiety about missing opportunities because of shitty OCR.

Wish I had seen this before making my resume in latex. One question, though to add publications, is it possible to use bibtex, or do you have to manually convert each publication to YAML?

Favorited for next time I make a resume - thanks for making this! Hopefully I’ll never have to touch LaTeX ever again.

I have been through a huge over supply of AI generated CVs using similar tools this year. I am sure this will help people so not bashing the tool per se, but bare in mind that you will be joining the robots.

I don't know what the solution really is, but as much as I hate it, a verified Linkedin Profile is a huge signal now. Otherwise a real personal site with care and history. I am guilty of being bad with the second so - no easy answers. Maybe even a wacky looking CV would make me notice a candidate more. Powerpoint 90s style.

I get the motivation, but it honestly feels a bit weird to use tens of thousands of lines of python code to do something that you can just directly do in typst.

I mean, a CV is not really rocket science and there are quite a few great typst templates out there.

This is clearly a real project that was built over several years with human effort (not vibe coded). Which makes it all the more depressing that the author decided to take a massive dump over the entire README.md with AI slop.

Sadly, it appears the project was heavily sloppified a mere 2 weeks ago: https://github.com/rendercv/rendercv/commit/5cc5fbdf9ec1a742...

Yaml itself can be a resume.

Looks nice! I do, however, see an issue with such tools, as they require people to maintain their CV. I don't want to hijack the thread so I won't link here unless asked to do so, but I've build something to keep developers' profiles up to date

In tough job markets, submitting 100 résumés before getting hired is not uncommon. Of possible interest is my Creating Catchy Cover Letters blog post, which uses my Markdown editor, KeenWrite (https://keenwrite.com), to create PDF files styled to match a company's branding:

https://keenwrite.com/blog/2025/10/15/creating-catchy-cover-...

A handful of prospective managers told me that my cover letter stood out among hundreds of applicants.

Here's the full shell script I used to build cover letters (you'll need to point "theme dir" to the directory where the cover letter theme---aspiros---is found). With this script, creating a cover letter went from about 20 minutes down to 5. If you have any troubles getting it to work, contact me via https://whitemagicsoftware.com/.

    #!/usr/bin/env bash

    # This script builds a cover letter based on a company's branding. The
    # parameters include:
    #
    # $1 -- The company name as a directory, containing colours and logo.
    # $2 -- The company name (normal case).
    # $3 -- The company role (job title).
    # $4 -- The relative path to the cover letter to typeset.
    #
    # Example:
    #
    # ./build.sh corp Corporation 'Job Title' template/cover-letter.md

    readonly SCRIPT_SRC="$(dirname "${BASH_SOURCE[${#BASH_SOURCE[@]} - 1]}")"
    readonly SCRIPT_DIR="$(cd "${SCRIPT_SRC}" >/dev/null 2>&1 && pwd)"

    readonly COMPANY_DIR="${1:-template}"
    readonly COMPANY_NAME="${2:-Template}"
    readonly COMPANY_ROLE="${3:-Job Title}"
    readonly PATH_COVER_LETTER="${4:-climate/cover-letter.md}"
    readonly EMPLOYEE_NAME="${5:-Your Name}"
    readonly EMPLOYEE_ROLE="${6:-Your Role}"

    read -r COLOUR_FG COLOUR_BG COLOUR_AC < "$COMPANY_DIR/colours.txt"
    readonly COLOUR_FG COLOUR_BG COLOUR_AC

    magick \
      signature-black.png \
      -alpha extract \
      -background "#${COLOUR_AC}" \
      -alpha shape \
      -define png:color-type=6 \
      signature.png

    rm -f ${HOME}/.local/share/keenwrite/logo_svg_*.pdf

    keenwrite.bin \
      -i "${PATH_COVER_LETTER}" \
      -o cover-letter.pdf \
      --set=employer.company.name="${COMPANY_NAME}" \
      --set=employer.position.role="${COMPANY_ROLE}" \
      --set=employee.name="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
      --set=employee.role="${EMPLOYEE_ROLE}" \
      --set=employee.contact.phone="555-1212" \
      --set=employee.contact.email="email@hostname" \
      --set=employee.portfolio.url="gitlab.com/YourName" \
      --set=employee.address.line.1="address 1" \
      --set=employee.address.line.2="city, province" \
      --set=employee.address.line.3="postal code" \
      --metadata="foreground=${COLOUR_FG}" \
      --metadata="background=${COLOUR_BG}" \
      --metadata="accent=${COLOUR_AC}" \
      --image-dir="${SCRIPT_DIR}/${COMPANY_DIR}" \
      --theme-dir="${HOME}/dev/java/keenwrite/themes/aspiros"

    exiftool \
      -overwrite_original_in_place \
      -Title="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
      -Author="${EMPLOYEE_NAME}" \
      cover-letter.pdf

This saved me about 19 hours of work; hopefully it will save you time, as well. See also: https://xkcd.com/1205/

Why invent a new file format when there is https://jsonresume.org/? Its also quite easy to customize and add more things as it does not prohibit extra values

I really love tools that treat documents as code. I have been trying to move my workflows away from binary formats (like PPT & Word) to text based ones I can more easily version control.

Does this support custom CSS for the layout or is it bound to the YAML templates?

First of all, thank you for making this. I used it in my recent job search and it was fantastic.

Second, if I may make a request, could you please follow SemVer? I tried rendering my resume again last week, only 3 or 4 months after having made it originally with RenderCV version 2 point something I cannot recall, and it would not work. The design schema and perhaps also the CLI options have changes so much that I expect I would need to spend 2 to 4 hours getting it to work again, and there is no guarantee that it would not break again in another month. I would have appreciated if the versioning scheme followed SemVer, so I would know that any v2 engine would work and v3 engine would not.

I also would appreciate it if you could write detailed migration docs between versions and/or recommendations in error messages. The reason I think migrating my CV would take so long is that I have to go by trial and error, searching for similar-sounding parameter names and replacing them one-by-one. I gave up after an hour of this as I was nowhere near done.

Third, is markdown render supposed to miss information or is it a bug? Some sections of the resume would not end up in the markdown version, only showing section title and nothing else. If this is not expected behaviour, please let me know.

Again, thank you for making this. I look forward to using it again in the future.

I just re-did my resume last week using Typst, and the experience had me contemplating building some kind of generator as well!

Anyway, I really enjoy using Typst.

How does this differ to TeX?

Used this for a recent resume update, super practical. Love the YAML + Typst combo and the version-controlled workflow. Thanks for building and sharing—this is genuinely useful!