Show HN: RenderCV – Open-source CV/resume generator, YAML to PDF

Posted by sinaatalay 2 days ago

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

I built RenderCV because Word kept breaking my layout and LaTeX was overkill. I wanted my CV as a single YAML file (content, design, margins, everything) that I could render with one command.

Run rendercv render cv.yaml → get a perfectly typeset PDF.

Highlights:

1. Version-controllable: Your CV is just text. Diff it, tag it.

2. LLM-friendly: Paste into ChatGPT, tailor to a job description, paste back, render. Batch-produce variants with terminal AI agents.

3. Perfect typography: Typst under the hood handles pixel-perfect alignment and spacing.

4. Full design control: Margins, fonts, colors, and more; tweak everything in YAML.

5. Comes with JSON Schema: Autocompletion and inline docs in your editor.

Battle-tested for 2+ years, thousands of users, 120k+ total PyPI downloads, 100% test coverage, actively maintained.

GitHub: https://github.com/rendercv/rendercv

Docs: https://docs.rendercv.com

Overview on RenderCV's software design (Pydantic + Jinja2 + Typst): https://docs.rendercv.com/developer_guide/understanding_rend...

I also wrote up the internals as an educational resource on maintaining Python projects (GitHub Actions, packaging, Docker, JSON Schema, deploying docs, etc.): https://docs.rendercv.com/developer_guide/

94 points | 41 commentspage 2

zpusmani 1 day ago|

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?

sinaatalay 1 day ago|

It’s completely flexible. However, it's not done through CSS. We use Typst to generate PDFs, and we template Typst files using Jinja2 from YAML. You can override the built-in Typst templates; see the guide here: https://docs.rendercv.com/user_guide/how_to/override_default...

zpusmani 1 day ago||

Ah makes sense, using Typst under the hood for strict layout control compared to CSS. Thanks for the link to the override guide and I'll check it out.

michidk 1 day ago||

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

sinaatalay 1 day ago|

The JSON Resume schema did not support what we needed, so we deliberately created our own.

We wanted to define 9 different entry schemas that could be used under any section title. In our schema, each section, regardless of its title, contains a list composed of one of these nine entry types. This is different from the JSON Resume approach, where specific entry schemas are tied to specific sections (work schema for work section, etc.).

In RenderCV, users can choose any section title they want and use any of the 9 entry types within it. Each entry type is rendered differently in the generated PDF.

NewsaHackO 2 days ago||

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?

sinaatalay 2 days ago|

Yes, unfortunately, you will need to convert them to YAML. I think an LLM can easily do that for you, though. This has been requested before, but we haven’t implemented it in order to keep our schema robust and simple. Maybe we should add it.

NewsaHackO 1 day ago||

OK, thanks. I don't have a lot of publications or anything, so for me it wouldn't be too much of an issue, but in certain fields I thought a CV was mostly publications/citations.

catapart 2 days ago||

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

sinaatalay 2 days ago|

We do have that, but it’s a bit outdated. We’ll update it at some point: https://app.rendercv.com

dfajgljsldkjag 2 days ago||

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...

sinaatalay 1 day ago|

You're absolutely right!

opengrass 2 days ago||

Yaml itself can be a resume.

uniqueuid 2 days ago||

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.

browningstreet 1 day ago|

As someone who's done a lot of hiring over the years and read/scanned thousands of resumes, I can attest: CVs are indeed rocket science.

uniqueuid 1 day ago||

Point taken, but I'd prefer 200 lines of rocket science that I understand and control over 60k lines of (cleanly written and documented) rocket science.

(Although admittedly both plain typst and this project are still way less complex than LaTeX.)

brcmthrowaway 1 day ago||

How does this differ to TeX?

thangalin 1 day ago|

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/