A few weeks ago, I started playing around with the idea of developing a CV builder, specifically for software developers. It came out of a personal frustration that I've had for a long time now, which is, the options available to me to write and maintain my CV are honestly not very good.
For the longest time, I kept my CV in LaTeX, which is something I really don't want to touch anymore. First of all, the language itself is not very intuitive. Next, installing gigabytes worth of LaTeX packages locally just to compile a text file to a PDF is not something I like doing very often. And I haven't even gotten to installing external packages (such as themes) yet. Overall, LaTeX hasn't been a very pleasant experience, so I'm ruling it out for the foreseeable future for maintaining my CV.
I then switched over to using a third-party app, which was okayish, except that they charged me something like $20 per month. I generally don't mind paying for services on the internet where I feel I'm getting enough value, but in this specific case it felt a bit too much. Besides, the whole experience felt very non-portable to me. In the end, I saved all my CV data on someone else's website, making my own CV opaque from myself.
Finally, I switched over to keeping my CV in a Google Doc, which kinda sorta works, but every single time I want to update it, I inevitably end up adjusting things like document margins, which is annoying.
So, I'm now working on shaving this yak.
I'm working on txtcv to help folks in tech (including myself) build and maintain their CVs. Here are the top three highlights from the project:
- txtcv is portable, using plaintext files to store CV data. JSON Resume is a pretty nice and mostly complete schema to represent CVs. txtcv only accepts CVs written in JSON (YAML support is in the pipeline) that comply with the JSON Resume schema. At all times, the data remains in your control. Put it in a git repository or edit it using the web interface – it doesn't really care. You can get the JSON out anytime you want.
- txtcv is cheap. The basic plan is free and it lets you maintain one CV. If you want more fancy features (e.g. CVs tailored to job description, mark your CV web link as private, AI-assisted cover-letter drafting etc.), the subscription plans start at $25 per year at the time of this writing, which comes down to roughly $2 per month. You're probably paying a lot more for coffee every day.
- txtcv has first-class developer integration. There is a CLI you can install locally or in Github Actions (more Git providers are in the pipeline) to validate and publish your CV from anywhere you want.
If this piques your interest, head over to https://txtcv.com, sign in using your Github account, and set up your first CV. Install the CLI via Homebrew if you'd rather drive the whole thing from the command line. And of course, feel free to follow the txtcv blog and @txtcv.com Bluesky account for the latest updates.
The project is still very early, so every bit of feedback helps shape what it becomes!