HN Explorer

Show HN: Cover letter generator with Ollama/local LLMs (Open source) (github.com)

14 points by stanyy ↗ HN
I built an open source web app that generates cover letters using local AI models (Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, etc.) so your resume and job application data never leaves your machine.

No placeholders. No typing. Letters are ready to copy and paste.

The workflow is: 1. Upload your resume (PDF) - it gets parsed and cached in your browser. 2. Paste the job description 3. Get a personalized cover letter in ~5 seconds

It connects to any OpenAI-compatible local LLM endpoint. I use it with Ollama + llama3.2, but it works with any local model server.

Key features: - 100% local and private depending on the LLM of your choice - Smart resume parsing with pdf-parse - Multi-language support (you can add more languages) - Editable output with one-click copy

I made this because I was tired of wasting time with writing letters while applying for jobs. All other tools I tried weren't as quick as I wanted because I still needed to modify the letters to replace placeholders.

I also didn't find any tool that let's me use my local LLM for free, and I didn't want to pay for ChatGPT/Claude API calls for every job application.

The output quality is good, and it can bypass some AI detectors.

It's open source too and free to use. You can self-host it or run it locally in development mode.

GitHub: https://github.com/stanleyume/coverlettermaker

Cheers :)

10 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 34.9 ms ] thread
saagarjha
I suspect that by using AI to write a cover letter that companies explicitly do not want you using AI for, to the extent that they’re trying to check for AI use, will help you “stand out”-but not in the way you probably want.
BugsJustFindMe
Now you too can send your fully automated AI resume and cover letter to the fully automated AI rejection system the company needed to set up because everyone is flooding them with thousands of automated AI resumes and cover letters that have no friction to generate.
6stringmerc
This was already an article, so in recognition of your genius, go donate to some journalists.
tfirst
If you are submitting an AI cover letter you should be aware that a significant portion of other applicants will be submitting nearly identical cover letters. If a human being is likely to read your cover letter I would write it yourself - even if you think the quality is lower. It looks unique to you, but not to the person reading 30 AI cover letters in a row.
minebreaker
When our team decides to hire a new programmer, each team member always writes a short letter, which tells the applicant why we want to hire them. How well they did in the interview, why they'd be a good fit for our team, etc, etc. I'm not naive enough to believe this is a genuine attempt but a some human engineering of persuasion, but I liked this tradition. At least it has some heart warming vibe.

Until I noticed that my coworkers were using LLMs to write these letters.

I lost hope in humanity.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
6stringmerc
I'm so glad to read about this!

Why?

Because it adds significant validation to my premise that AI is simply "automation improved" at this juncture and a crutch more than a viable tool in 90% of use cases.

In short, seeing "I made this because I was tired of wasting time with writing letters while applying for jobs" has me dying with laughter because the translation I come up with is "I am so crippled by laziness I'm recalcitrant to do the work to actually get the position to do work" and that's my take-away.

Of course there will be arguments to my perspective and I welcome them. I would like to feature them in my writings on this subject. AI is a shortcut for lazy, otherwise talentless people. I say this as neither.