Hired Hand: Resume Builder

Overview

A Visual Studio Code extension for building an ATS-compatible resume without leaving the editor. Fill out a structured template — Contact, Summary, Education, Experience, Skills, Certifications, Projects — through a form-based editor, get live compatibility warnings as you go, and export to Markdown, HTML, DOCX, or PDF.

Features

• Create New Resume — scaffolds a resume.json in your workspace from a clean template.
• Edit Resume — a webview form editor with add/remove controls for repeatable sections (multiple jobs, degrees, skill groups, and so on).
• Live ATS compatibility checks — missing contact info, empty sections, overlong or special-character-laden bullet points, and duplicate skills are flagged in the Problems panel as you edit.
• Export Resume — one command, four formats: Markdown, HTML, DOCX, and PDF, all single-column with no tables or images, so the layout an ATS parser sees matches what you built.

Status

This extension is in active development — see CHANGELOG.md for what has shipped so far and CONTRIBUTING.md for the development plan and branch workflow.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio Code 1.85 or later
• Node.js 20.x and npm

Installation

Not yet published to the Marketplace. To try it from source:

git clone https://github.com/RichardMcQuiston01/resume-ats-vscode-ext.git
cd resume-ats-vscode-ext
npm install
npm run build

Then open the folder in VS Code and press F5 to launch an Extension Development Host.

Usage

1. Open a folder or workspace in VS Code.
2. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P).
3. Run Hired Hand: Create New Resume to scaffold a resume.json in the workspace root (or open it, if one already exists).
4. Run Hired Hand: Edit Resume to fill it out in a form-based webview editor, with add/remove controls for repeatable sections (education, experience, skills, certifications, projects). Saving validates the data before writing it back to resume.json. While resume.json is open, ATS compatibility warnings appear live in the Problems panel, updating as you edit.
5. Run Hired Hand: Export Resume and pick a format — Markdown, HTML, DOCX, or PDF. The export is written alongside resume.json (e.g. resume.pdf).

The Edit Resume and Export Resume commands are also available as toolbar buttons in the editor title bar whenever resume.json is the active file.

Examples

{
  "schemaVersion": 1,
  "contact": {
    "fullName": "",
    "email": "",
    "phone": "",
    "location": "",
    "linkedInUrl": "",
    "portfolioUrl": ""
  },
  "summary": "",
  "education": [],
  "experience": [],
  "skills": [],
  "certifications": [],
  "projects": []
}

Buy Me a Coffee

If this app, code, or repository has helped you or someone you know, please consider donating. I appreciate any help to offset the costs of development and/or AI Credits.

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License

Apache 2

Copyright

(c)2026 Richard McQuiston. All rights reserved.