ats-resume-agent

ATS Resume Writer Agent for Claude Code

v1.2.0. Prefer the original? It is preserved as the v1.1.0 release and the v1 branch. See CHANGELOG.md for what changed.

An AI-powered resume and cover letter generator built on Claude Code. It creates ATS-optimized, LaTeX-formatted resumes tailored to specific job descriptions. It also includes a guided career document builder that helps you create the source material through an interactive interview.

Zero fabrication policy: The agent will never estimate metrics, suggest proxy numbers, or embellish your experience. If a quantified achievement isn't in your master document, it won't appear in the output. This is a hard constraint, not a suggestion, and a validator checks it in code.

How It Works

The project has two agents that work together:

1. Career Document Builder: Guides you through an interactive interview to create a comprehensive Master Career Document. It can also ingest existing resumes, LinkedIn profile exports, or any career materials you already have as a starting point.
2. Resume Writer: Takes your Master Career Document and a job description, then produces a tailored LaTeX resume optimized for Applicant Tracking Systems. You run this each time you apply somewhere.

The typical flow:

1. Build your Master Career Document once (guided interview or manual)
2. Drop a job description file into the project
3. Tell Claude to generate a resume
4. The agent selects the most relevant content, maps keywords, and produces a polished PDF
5. The validator confirms every checked claim traces to your MCD, and an optional plain-text export gives you a copy for application forms

You can use it from a clone of this repository or install it as a Claude Code plugin.

Sample Output

Here's what the agent produces from the included example data:

Resume:

Cover Letter:

Prerequisites

Claude Code

Install Claude Code (Anthropic's CLI tool). On macOS, Linux, or WSL:

curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.sh | bash

On Windows PowerShell:

irm https://claude.ai/install.ps1 | iex

On Windows CMD, run curl -fsSL https://claude.ai/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd. Homebrew (brew install --cask claude-code) and WinGet (winget install Anthropic.ClaudeCode) also work. Run claude --version afterward to confirm the install. See the setup guide for other options.

You need a Claude Pro, Max, Team, or Enterprise plan, or an Anthropic Console (API) account. The free claude.ai plan does not include Claude Code. See authentication for details. Each resume generation typically uses the Sonnet model and takes 30-60 seconds. The career document builder interview takes longer depending on career complexity.

LaTeX (for PDF compilation)

The agent outputs .tex files. To compile them to PDF, you need pdflatex.

Ubuntu/Debian/WSL:

sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-base texlive-fonts-recommended \
  texlive-fonts-extra texlive-latex-extra cm-super

This installs all required LaTeX packages. cm-super provides the scalable fonts the cover letter template needs; without it, pdflatex stops with auto expansion is only possible with scalable fonts.

macOS:

brew install --cask mactex-no-gui

The full mactex-no-gui (~4GB) includes all required packages. The smaller basictex (~100MB) may be missing fonts and packages. If you use it, install missing packages with tlmgr:

sudo tlmgr update --self
sudo tlmgr install fontawesome5 fontawesome CormorantGaramond charter \
  ragged2e microtype lastpage bookmark tabularx enumitem titlesec fancyhdr cm-super

Important: The resume template uses fontawesome5 and the cover letter template uses fontawesome. These are separate packages, and both must be installed for full functionality.

Bun (for the validator and text export)

The zero-fabrication validator and the plain-text export run on Bun. Resume generation works without it, but the agent skips those two steps. On macOS, Linux, or WSL:

curl -fsSL https://bun.com/install | bash

See the Bun installation docs for Windows and other options.

To check if a specific package is installed:

kpsewhich fontawesome5.sty

If pdflatex fails with File 'X.sty' not found, install the missing package:

sudo tlmgr install <package-name>

If you don't have LaTeX installed and don't want to install it locally, you can still use the agent to generate the .tex files and compile them using Overleaf or another online LaTeX editor.

Setup

There are two ways to use this project. Clone it (steps below) if you want to edit the templates or agents. Or install it as a Claude Code plugin and use it from any folder without cloning (see Install as a plugin).

1. Clone this repository:

   git clone https://github.com/NullSpace-BitCradle/ats-resume-agent.git
   cd ats-resume-agent
   

2. Check dependencies (optional but recommended):

   ./setup.sh
   

   This checks for Claude Code and LaTeX, and offers to install anything missing.

3. Create your Master Career Document (choose one):

   Option A, guided interview (recommended):

   Help me build my career document
   

   The career-doc-builder agent will walk you through an interactive interview to produce a comprehensive 18-section MCD. If you have existing resumes, LinkedIn exports, or other career materials, it can ingest those as a starting point.

   Option B, manual:

   cp examples/Master_Career_Document.md Master_Career_Document.md
   

   Edit Master_Career_Document.md with your real career data. See the example file for the expected format and available features like agent notes and legacy sections.

   Note: Master_Career_Document.md and Job_Description-*.md files in the project root are gitignored by default to prevent accidentally committing personal information. The example files in examples/ are tracked normally.

4. Start Claude Code in the project directory:

   claude
   

   The agent definition in .claude/agents/ats-resume-writer.md is preconfigured, so you don't need to read or modify it to generate resumes.

Install as a plugin

This repository is also a Claude Code plugin marketplace. Inside any Claude Code session, run these, then confirm the install in the /plugin panel that the second command opens:

/plugin marketplace add NullSpace-BitCradle/ats-resume-agent
/plugin install ats-resume-agent@nullspace-bitcradle

Or from your shell, where the install finishes directly:

claude plugin marketplace add NullSpace-BitCradle/ats-resume-agent
claude plugin install ats-resume-agent@nullspace-bitcradle

That installs both agents (ats-resume-writer and career-doc-builder) along with the LaTeX templates and the validator. Then work from any folder that holds your Master_Career_Document.md and a Job_Description-*.md file. Generated files go to output/ in that folder. You still need pdflatex for PDFs (see Prerequisites), and Bun if you want the validator.

To update later, run /plugin marketplace update nullspace-bitcradle.

Usage

Generate a Resume

Drop a job description file in the project root:

# Name it following the convention:
# Job_Description-[Company]-[Role].md

Then tell Claude:

Resume for the Example Corp file

or:

Resume and cover letter for the Example Corp file

The agent will:

1. Read your Master Career Document
2. Analyze the job description for keywords and requirements
3. Select the most relevant experience and skills
4. Generate a .tex file with ATS-optimized content
5. Compile it to PDF using pdflatex
6. Run the validator and fix any claim it flags (if Bun is installed)
7. Write a plain-text copy for application forms (if Bun is installed)

Output files are saved to the output/ directory.

Review and Iterate

After generating a resume, you can ask for adjustments:

Make the summary more focused on leadership experience

Add the CloudBridge SSO migration project to the experience section

Cut it to one page and lead with the platform work

Verify Zero Fabrication

The zero-fabrication promise is checked in code, not just in the prompt. The validator reads a generated resume and your Master Career Document and fails if the resume contains anything the MCD does not back up:

• Numbers: every number, including spelled-out ones like "fifteen" or "12 million", must appear in the MCD. Percentages must match a percentage, money must match money in the same currency, and scaled values must match by value, so 2.3M, 2.3 million, and 2,300,000 are interchangeable, but a bare 3 does not back 3M.
• Dates: each start and end date on a heading line. Mar 2022, March 2022, and 03/2022 count as the same date, and so do Present and Current.
• Employers, titles, and degrees: the text of every \headingBf, \headingIt, and \heading line, plus client names in \itemTitle{Client: ...}. When a heading has several parts (Software Engineer, Mathematics), they must all come from one section of the MCD, not from anywhere in it. Common degree abbreviations (B.S., MBA, Ph.D.) match the spelled-out degree.
• Certifications: each item, and any loose text, under a Certifications, Licenses, or Credentials heading or section. The name, issuer, and year must appear together in one MCD bullet, so when each certification is its own bullet, a real certification with a shifted year still fails. An entry can run across several lines.
• Skills: each item in the skills table, including rows that wrap across lines. An acronym passes when the MCD spells out the phrase it stands for (TDD for Test-Driven Development), and AWS (EC2, Lambda) in the MCD backs AWS Lambda.

These never count as a source: the "Legacy & Historical Platforms" section at any heading level (and titles like "Legacy Skills", "Deprecated Skills", or plain "Legacy"), Agent Notes, whether a quoted block or a bullet (a note saying "never list CISSP" is not evidence of CISSP), HTML comments, link targets, and the table of contents.

It also flags an unescaped % after a number (34% instead of 34\%). LaTeX treats that % as the start of a comment, so the rest of the line silently disappears from the PDF even though pdflatex reports success.

If the resume has a skills section (Skills, Core Competencies, Technical Proficiencies, and similar names) or a certifications heading the validator cannot read, for example skills written as plain text instead of the template's table, it reports a coverage finding instead of passing. An unfamiliar layout fails loudly; it never passes silently.

The validator needs Bun:

bun tools/validate.ts output/Resume-Your_Name-Company-Role.tex Master_Career_Document.md

It prints PASS and exits 0, or lists each unsupported claim with its line number and exits 1. Files that don't end in .tex are read as plain text, and only their numbers are checked.

Cover letters can name the company, the role, and facts from the job posting, so pass the job description as an extra source:

bun tools/validate.ts output/CoverLetter-Your_Name-Company-Role.tex Master_Career_Document.md Job_Description-Company-Role.md

A number that only the job description backs has to keep its context: the letter's sentence must share a word with the posting's sentence. serving 50M+ users passes against "serving 50M+ monthly active users", but mentored 5 junior engineers does not pass just because the posting asks for "5+ years". Close paraphrases can still fail (the 5-year requirement shares no word with 5+ years); reword or leave the number out.

The letter's own date is skipped when it sits on a line of its own that starts a paragraph (after a blank line, and followed by a blank line, a \\ break, or the salutation), or after \hfill at the end of a line. A date inside a sentence is still checked, and resumes never skip dates.

The validator refuses extra sources for a file with resume structure. Everything on a resume has to come from your own history, and a job posting's tech stack is exactly where padded skills come from.

What it cannot prove:

• It matches values, not sentences. If a real number, title, or date shows up attached to the wrong role, the validator will not notice.
• Parts of a heading can be combined within one MCD section. Any parts found in the same section pass together, so a target title and a held title, or a title and a word from that role's bullets, can be joined into one heading.
• A posting's metric can be claimed as your own if the sentence shares words with the posting's sentence.
• Shorthand like 45m reads as 45 million. Write out minutes.
• Synonyms fail. If the MCD says PostgreSQL and the resume says Postgres, it fails. The fix is to add the term to your MCD if it's true.
• Prose isn't parsed for names. An employer mentioned only in the summary paragraph isn't checked.

Treat a PASS as "nothing was invented," not "every sentence is accurate," and still read the output.

Plain-Text Export

Some applicant tracking systems read plain text more reliably than a PDF, and many application forms want resume text pasted into a box. The export turns a generated .tex into clean text with standard section headings, one line per role, and dash bullets:

bun tools/export-text.ts output/Resume-Your_Name-Company-Role.tex

It writes output/Resume-Your_Name-Company-Role.txt (pass a second argument to choose the path). It also handles cover letters. The .tex stays the source of truth. The export is derived from it, so run the validator on the .txt too if you edit it by hand.

Build or Update Your Career Document

The career-doc-builder agent guides you through creating a comprehensive Master Career Document via interactive interview:

Help me build my career document

It can also enrich an existing MCD:

Review my career document for gaps

Update my MCD with my new role

How the Career Document Builder Works

The agent runs a multi-phase interview that builds your career document section by section:

1. Intake: Feed it existing resumes, LinkedIn exports, or any career materials you have. It extracts roles, skills, metrics, and dates as a baseline. Starting from scratch is fine too.
2. Identity & Positioning: Establishes your target titles, value proposition, and writes 2-4 genuinely different professional summary angles.
3. Skills Inventory: Walks through skill categories relevant to your field, suggests gaps, and separates current skills from legacy ones.
4. Work Experience: The core of the interview. Goes role by role (most recent first), probing for metrics, suggesting common responsibilities you may have missed, and offering agent notes where context matters.
5. Supporting Sections: Education, certifications, publications, compliance expertise, volunteer work, and positioning guidance.
6. Synthesis: Revises your summaries with the full career context, curates a highlight reel of your strongest metrics, and delivers the final document.

The output is a single Markdown file with 18 structured sections. The interview typically takes 30-60 minutes depending on career complexity and how much existing material you provide. Once complete, you reuse this document every time you generate a resume, with no re-interviewing.

Project Structure

ats-resume-agent/
|-- README.md                 # This file
|-- CHANGELOG.md              # Release notes
|-- CONTRIBUTING.md           # How to contribute
|-- LICENSE                   # MIT
|-- CLAUDE.md                 # Instructions for Claude Code (you don't need to edit this)
|-- setup.sh                  # Dependency checker and installer
|-- package.json              # Bun scripts: validate, export, test
|-- agents/                   # Same agents, in the plugin layout (kept identical by CI)
|-- .claude-plugin/
|   |-- plugin.json           # Plugin manifest (name, version, metadata)
|   `-- marketplace.json      # Lets /plugin marketplace add install from this repo
|-- .github/
|   |-- ISSUE_TEMPLATE/       # Bug report and LaTeX error forms
|   `-- workflows/ci.yml      # Validator tests, LaTeX build, plugin install check
|-- .gitignore                # Excludes output files and personal documents
|-- .claude/
|   `-- agents/
|       |-- ats-resume-writer.md   # Resume/cover letter generation agent
|       `-- career-doc-builder.md  # Interactive career document builder agent
|-- images/                        # Screenshots for README
|-- tools/
|   |-- validate.ts                # Zero-fabrication validator
|   |-- latex.ts                   # Shared LaTeX parsing helpers
|   |-- export-text.ts             # Plain-text export for ATS portals
|   `-- *.test.ts                  # Tests (bun test)
|-- templates/
|   |-- resume-template.tex        # LaTeX resume template (CC-BY-4)
|   |-- LICENSE-CC-BY-4.0.md       # License notice for the resume template
|   `-- cover-letter-template.tex  # LaTeX cover letter template
|-- examples/
|   |-- Master_Career_Document.md  # Example career doc with fake data
|   |-- Job_Description-Example_Corp-Senior_Engineer.md  # Example JD
|   `-- sample-output/
|       |-- Resume-Alex_Morgan-Example_Corp-Senior_Engineer.tex  # Example generated resume
|       |-- CoverLetter-Alex_Morgan-Example_Corp-Senior_Engineer.tex  # Example cover letter
|       |-- resume-preview.pdf     # Blank resume template, rendered
|       `-- cover-letter-preview.pdf  # Blank cover letter template, rendered
`-- output/                        # Generated resumes go here (gitignored)

Master Career Document Format

The career-doc-builder agent produces a comprehensive 18-section MCD. You can also create one manually; the resume writer agent handles both formats. Key sections:

Section	Purpose
Contact Information	Name, phone, email, LinkedIn, GitHub
Professional Identity & Positioning	Target titles and core value proposition
Professional Summaries	2-4 different summary angles for different role types
Hybrid Strengths	Cross-domain strengths (section name adapts to your field)
Core Competencies & Technical Skills	Categorized skill lists with sub-categories
Industries Supported	Industries served across your career
Work Experience	Detailed roles with metrics and agent notes
Education & Training	Degrees, courses, certifications, lab environments
Key Achievements & Metrics	Curated highlight reel of strongest outcomes
Leadership & Soft Skills	Leadership style, values, professional attributes
Notes for Resume Customization	Positioning angles and metrics guidance by role type
Legacy & Historical Platforms	Outdated skills to exclude from resumes

See examples/Master_Career_Document.md for the full 18-section structure with all available sections.

Agent Notes

You can embed instructions for the agent directly in your career document:

> **Agent Note:** This project was collaborative; do not attribute sole ownership.

The agent treats these as binding instructions and will respect them when generating content.

Legacy Section

Any content under a "Legacy & Historical Platforms" heading is automatically excluded from all generated resumes, and the validator never counts it as a source. Titles like "Legacy Skills" or "Deprecated Skills" work the same way. Use this for outdated skills you want to keep on record but never include in applications.

Key Design Decisions

LaTeX over Word/PDF: LaTeX produces consistent, professional formatting and is ATS-compatible through Unicode glyph mapping (\pdfgentounicode=1). The PDF output is machine-readable by ATS systems despite custom fonts and styling.

Keyword-first content selection: The agent builds a keyword map from each job description and prioritizes matching content from your career document. Skills sections list job-description keywords first within each category.

One source of truth: All content comes from the Master Career Document. The agent never asks you for information during generation. It reads the files and produces output.

Checked, not trusted: The prompt tells the agent not to fabricate, and the validator checks that it didn't. CI runs the validator tests, builds every template and example with pdflatex, and installs the plugin on every push.

Customization

Adjusting the Visual Design

The LaTeX templates in templates/ control the visual design:

• Colors: Edit the \definecolor lines in templates/resume-template.tex

  \definecolor{accentTitle}{HTML}{0e6e55}  % Name and section text
  \definecolor{accentText}{HTML}{0e6e55}   % Section headings
  \definecolor{accentLine}{HTML}{a16f0b}   % Horizontal rules
  

• Fonts: Uncomment one of the sans-serif options or keep the default serif (Garamond + Charter)
• Margins: Adjust the \addtolength values
• Bullet style: Change \renewcommand\labelitemi{--} to use a different bullet character

Adjusting Content Strategy

The agent's content selection strategy and quality standards are defined in the "The resume" section of .claude/agents/ats-resume-writer.md. You can modify these to match your preferences. For example, changing the recency bias from 5-7 years to 10 years, or adjusting the page limit. If you plan to contribute the change, copy the file to agents/ too; the plugin loads that copy, and CI checks the two match.

Cover Letter Tone

Edit the "The cover letter" section of the agent definition to adjust tone, structure, or length preferences.

Model Settings

Both agents default to Sonnet (model: sonnet in each agent file's frontmatter). You can pick a different model in any of these ways, from most specific to least:

• Per request: name the model when you ask, such as "use the ats-resume-writer agent on Opus for the Example Corp file." A model named in the request wins over the other two settings below.
• Per agent: change the model: line at the top of .claude/agents/ats-resume-writer.md or .claude/agents/career-doc-builder.md. It takes an alias (sonnet, opus, haiku), a full model ID, or inherit to use whatever model your main session runs.
• For every subagent: set CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL (for example, to opus) in your environment or in the env block of your Claude Code settings. It applies to agents with no model: line. Adding CLAUDE_CODE_SUBAGENT_MODEL_FORCE=1 makes it win over everything: the model: lines are ignored, and a model named per request is too.

These work the same for a plugin install, whose agent files keep the model: sonnet line. With a plugin, though, the agent files live in Claude Code's plugin cache and are replaced on every update, so choose per request or with the environment variable rather than editing them. See choosing a subagent's model.

How models compare on this workflow

On 2026-09-27, each model got the resume writer's instructions plus the example MCD and job description, with no sample output available to copy, and wrote the Example Corp resume. These runs skipped the agent's own validator step, so they measure what the model writes before any check; the validator scored each result afterward. Runs passing, across all batches:

Model	Original prompt	Rewritten prompt
Sonnet	2 of 2	4 of 4
Opus	2 of 2	2 of 2
Haiku	1 of 4	4 of 4

With the original prompt, Haiku added Kafka, which appears only in the job description's tech stack, in 2 of 4 runs, and wrote 34% instead of 34\% (which silently cuts the rest of the line out of the PDF) in 2 of 4. The rewrite states that the job description never supplies content, puts a check on the skills table (where the padding happened), and requires escaping LaTeX special characters. Two further Haiku runs with the validator step turned on also passed, after fixing what it flagged.

"Original prompt" is v1.1.0 plus this release's plugin paths and validator steps, which these runs skipped. "Rewritten prompt" covers the rewrite and one round of small review edits (summary length, tense, certification form). These are small samples, so treat them as a smoke test rather than a benchmark. Sonnet stays the default: Opus did no better on these checks and costs more. Either way, keep the validator step on.

If you find the agents occasionally deviating from instructions (adding unsolicited content, ignoring agent notes), start a fresh session to avoid context pollution from previous conversations. Running plain claude always starts a new session (only --continue or --resume pick up an old one), and /clear wipes the context inside a session that is already open.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

The LaTeX resume template (templates/resume-template.tex) is adapted from MTecknology/latex-resume by Michael Lustfield, modified for this project, and licensed under CC-BY-4.0. See templates/LICENSE-CC-BY-4.0.md.

Acknowledgments

• Resume LaTeX template adapted from MTecknology/latex-resume by Michael Lustfield (CC-BY-4.0)
• Built for use with Claude Code by Anthropic