pressume

Turn a Markdown resume or CV into a PDF, plain-text file, or Word document, then check the files that were actually created.

Why I made it

I keep my full career history in Markdown because it is portable, searchable, and easy to review. I wanted the same source file to produce a clean resume, a longer CV, and the plain text that hiring systems extract, without maintaining a separate Word document by hand.

The conversion step was only half the problem. A PDF can look fine while its text extracts in the wrong order, a link can stop working, a title can change, or a page can overflow. pressume renders the document and then reopens the PDF, TXT, or DOCX to check the things it knows how to test.

I built this for my own job search. My background is pharmacy, clinical informatics, biomedical data, and knowledge systems, not professional software engineering. Claude and ChatGPT were used extensively to help write and revise the code, tests, and documentation. I set the requirements, reviewed the behavior, and tested real outputs, but I do not claim that every line was written by hand or that automated tests make the project infallible. That is worth saying plainly in a public repository.

Quick start

Install with uv:

uv tool install git+https://github.com/sethstraw/pressume.git

If the command is not on your PATH, run uv tool update-shell once. Then:

mkdir my-resume
cd my-resume
pressume new resume
pressume preview Resume.md --open

Edit Resume.md and create the final files:

pressume render

Without a configuration file, pressume reads Markdown files from the current directory, writes to ./renders, and creates PDF and TXT output.

What it does

• Renders Markdown through Pandoc and Typst.
• Creates PDF and TXT by default, with DOCX available when requested.
• Provides three bundled themes and three spacing densities.
• Validates the Markdown before rendering.
• Checks page targets, extracted text, exact wording, links, metadata, accessibility structure, and important layout relationships in the PDF.
• Reopens TXT and DOCX output and checks their content and structure.
• Builds a group of documents in a temporary location before replacing existing output, so one failed document does not leave a partly updated set.
• Keeps a manifest of generated files so cleanup can distinguish its own output from files it did not create.

pressume does not score a resume, tailor its content, submit applications, or claim compatibility with every applicant-tracking system. Its checks cover specific, observable properties. You should still read the finished document before sending it.

Commands

Command	Purpose
pressume new resume	Create a starter resume.
pressume new cv	Create a starter CV.
pressume new letter	Create a starter cover letter.
pressume preview	Render a local preview, optionally open it or watch for changes.
pressume lint	Validate Markdown without rendering.
pressume render	Validate, render, verify, and replace the requested output files.
pressume check	Verify existing output without rendering again.
pressume inspect	Report advisory readability and page-balance findings.
pressume list	Show which sources and output files are selected.
pressume clean	Preview stale generated files; add --apply to remove them.
pressume init	Create a documented pressume.toml.
pressume refdoc	Generate the DOCX style reference for the current theme.
pressume doctor	Report installation and project diagnostics.

Run pressume COMMAND --help for the full options. Document commands support --json for scripts.

pressume render Resume.md --formats pdf
pressume inspect Resume.md --json
pressume render --source ~/Documents/resumes --output ~/Desktop/applications

Markdown format

The bundled templates are the easiest place to start. The standard resume format expects:

• one H1 on the first line for the candidate's name;
• an optional contact line immediately after the name; email and phone are optional, so a public copy can leave them out;
• H2 section headings in a conventional order;
• H3 headings for roles inside experience sections;
• skills written as **Label:** content;
• dates written consistently, normally January 2022 to March 2025;
• no tables, HTML, images, code blocks, blockquotes, or footnotes under the standard policy.

pressume lint reports the rule and source line when the document does not match the configured format. Academic, international, minimal, and letter policies are available for documents that need a different contract.

Letters

A cover letter is a document with its own policy. Give it a profile in configuration:

[[documents]]
file = "Cover_Letter.md"
profile = "letter"
pages = 1

[profiles.letter]
policy = "letter"

The letter policy keeps the front of the resume contract: one H1 on the first line for the name, and the contact paragraph directly after it. Everything after that is prose. The policy empties the section vocabulary, so any ## heading fails as an unknown section, and no section is required, labeled, or dated. The Markdown rules and the ban on tables, HTML, images, code, blockquotes, footnotes, and numbered lists still apply, as do the page target, text, link, metadata, and accessibility checks on the output. A date-consistency warning is expected when the letter mentions no dates.

In the PDF, a letter's paragraphs are set apart by a visible gap in every theme and density, and its metadata title reads Name - Letter. pressume new letter writes a starter Letter.md.

Themes and output

The bundled themes are:

• modern: Source Sans 3 with a restrained navy accent;
• technical: IBM Plex Sans with a slightly tighter layout;
• traditional: Source Serif 4 for a more conventional or academic document.

Preview a theme and spacing density without changing configuration:

pressume preview Resume.md --theme traditional --density spacious --open

The supported densities are compact, balanced, and spacious. Font, size, margin, accent color, language, and region can also be set in configuration.

Paper is us-letter or a4. Both are set on the PDF and on the Word file, so the two agree; a size the Word file cannot be given is rejected rather than quietly downgraded. The PDF standard is ua-1, which tags the file for accessible reading order, or default if a portal rejects a tagged PDF. PDF/A is not offered: every PDF/A level requires a document date, and pressume writes no date so the same source always produces the same file.

[paths].fonts adds font directories. They are searched before the fonts that ship with pressume, so a font of your own with a bundled family's name is used instead of the bundled one. Without that setting, rendering uses only the bundled fonts and does not depend on what is installed on the machine.

Configuration

Configuration is optional. Run pressume init to create a commented starter file. Unknown settings and invalid values fail visibly rather than being ignored.

[paths]
source_dir = "."
output_dir = "renders"

[output]
formats = ["pdf", "txt"]

[style]
theme = "modern"
density = "balanced"
paper = "us-letter"
language = "en"
region = "US"

[[documents]]
file = "Resume.md"
pages = 2
output_name = "Jane_Doe_Resume"

[checks]
required_strings = ["jane@example.com"]
protected_strings = ["Senior Clinical Data Architect"]
forbidden_strings = ["DRAFT"]

required_strings must appear. forbidden_strings must not appear. A protected_strings value is conditional: if its first word appears, the full configured phrase must appear. This is useful for official titles that must not be shortened but do not belong in every version of a resume.

An exact pages target can be replaced with min_pages and max_pages. Formats, metadata, and exact-string checks can be set for individual documents. Named profiles can give a resume and a full CV different section rules while keeping them in the same folder.

What is checked

For PDF output, pressume checks the requested page count or range, compares text from two independent extractors, and checks character policy, required and protected wording, contact details, section order, dates, metadata, document language, hyperlink annotations, tagged accessibility structure, and spacing around important headings. The line above a section heading and its rule fails under 2.0 pt of clearance and warns under 3.0 pt.

For TXT output, it checks the extracted text and exact-string rules. For DOCX, it reopens the OOXML package and checks linear structure, text order, links, and selected metadata. DOCX pagination is not certified because Word-compatible applications do not all paginate identically.

pressume inspect is advisory. It points out things such as long bullets, repeated openings, crowded pages, stranded headings, and sparse endings, but it does not block an otherwise valid document. For a document with an exact pages target, a final page whose text spans under 85% of the median height of the pages before it also counts as a sparse ending.

Privacy and safety

Rendering, checking, watching, and cleanup operate on local files and make no network requests. A test enforces this: it blocks the socket calls this process would have to make, then renders and verifies a document. Pandoc and Typst run as separate processes, so that test cannot see inside them; what it proves is that pressume's own code and every library it calls to render, reopen, and check a file never open a connection. Opening a preview uses the system's local viewer. Generated documents may contain author, title, description, keywords, and language metadata, so review both content and metadata before sharing them.

pressume clean only removes files recorded in its output manifest, and only when --apply is supplied. A file you put in the output folder yourself survives it. A failed render leaves the existing files untouched, including when the document renders successfully and then fails verification.

Using it with tailorcv

tailorcv is a separate project that uses language models to select and rewrite evidence from a master CV for a job description. It produces Markdown; pressume can render that Markdown. Neither application imports or requires the other.

Development

git clone https://github.com/sethstraw/pressume.git
cd pressume
uv sync --locked --all-groups
bash scripts/gate.sh

scripts/gate.sh is the full verification gate, the same one CI runs.

Contributions, bug reports, and documentation corrections are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md, and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md.

License

pressume is released under the MIT License. Bundled fonts retain their SIL Open Font Licenses in the package.