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Getting Started with Resume as Code

Resume as Code is a CLI tool that treats your career data as structured, queryable truth. Instead of maintaining multiple static resume documents, you capture accomplishments as Work Units and generate tailored resumes on demand.

Installation​

# Install with pip
pip install resume-as-code

# Or with uv (recommended)
uv pip install resume-as-code

Quick Start​

1. Initialize Your Project​

# Create a new resume project
mkdir my-resume && cd my-resume
resume init

This creates the basic structure:

my-resume/
├── .resume.yaml          # Project configuration
├── positions.yaml        # Employment history
├── certifications.yaml   # Certifications
├── education.yaml        # Education
└── work-units/           # Your accomplishments

2. Add Your Employment History​

# Add a position interactively
resume new position

# Or inline (LLM-optimized)
resume new position "TechCorp|Senior Engineer|2022-01|"

3. Capture Your Accomplishments​

Work Units are the atomic unit of career data. Each represents a single accomplishment with context:

# Create a work unit with archetype template
resume new work-unit --archetype incident

# Quick capture mode
resume new work-unit \
  --position-id pos-techcorp-senior-engineer \
  --title "Reduced deployment time by 80%"

4. Generate a Tailored Resume​

# Analyze job description and select best Work Units
resume plan --jd job-description.txt

# Generate resume files
resume build --jd job-description.txt

Core Concepts​

Work Units​

Work Units are the building blocks of your resume. Each captures:

  • Problem: The challenge or context
  • Actions: What you did (quantified)
  • Result: The measurable outcome
  • Skills: Technologies and competencies demonstrated
# work-units/wu-2024-01-15-deployment-automation.yaml
id: wu-2024-01-15-deployment-automation
position_id: pos-techcorp-senior-engineer
title: Reduced deployment time by 80%
par:
  problem: Manual deployments took 4 hours and caused frequent outages
  actions:
    - Designed CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions
    - Implemented blue-green deployment strategy
    - Added automated rollback on failure
  result: Deployments now take 48 minutes with zero-downtime releases
skills_demonstrated:
  - CI/CD
  - GitHub Actions
  - DevOps
  - Automation

Selection Algorithm​

When you run resume plan, the tool:

  1. Parses the job description for required skills and keywords
  2. Ranks your Work Units using BM25 + semantic matching
  3. Shows you exactly what will be included and why
  4. Identifies skill gaps (what the JD wants that you don't have)

Output Generation​

resume build generates professional resumes in multiple formats:

  • PDF: Using WeasyPrint for beautiful typeset output
  • DOCX: ATS-friendly Microsoft Word format
  • JSON: Machine-readable for integrations

Next Steps​