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, styled to match Hired Hand's branding, with:
  • add/remove/reorder controls for repeatable entries (multiple jobs, degrees, skill groups, and so on) and for whole sections.
  • required-field validation (Full Name, Email, Job Title/Employer, Institution/Degree) that blocks Save and names the first missing field until fixed.
  • native month-picker fields for graduation, start/end, and issue dates, with a "Present" checkbox for ongoing roles.
  • a Bold/Italic toolbar for Highlights bullets, using Markdown-style formatting that carries through to every exported format.
  • a Save button in a sticky header and a floating jump-to-top button, for quick editing of long resumes.
• 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. Bold/italic Highlights formatting renders as real bold/italic text in every format. HTML, DOCX, and PDF exports can be tuned for the people who will read them (font, text size, spacing, margins, paper size) from VS Code settings, without giving up ATS-friendly structure.

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.

Customizing exports

An ATS reads your resume first, then a person does, so the HTML, DOCX, and PDF exports can be tuned for readability. Open Settings and search for hiredHand.export.

Leave a setting empty to use the preset's value; set one to override just that part. Markdown exports have no layout, so the style settings do not apply to them. A Markdown export simply lists everything you entered for each project and certification.

ATS safety is built in. Settings can only change how the page looks, never its structure: the exports stay a single column of real text with real headings, in fonts every ATS, PDF reader, and Word install has. A value outside its range is ignored, and the export tells you which setting and why, instead of failing. If a choice is allowed but hard on human readers (body text under 10 pt, tight line spacing, very narrow margins), the export still succeeds and adds a short note.

Project and certification details

Besides a name and description, a project can have a URL, a repository URL, a demo URL, a tech stack, and an outcome (the result or impact, for example "Cut reconciliation from 2 days to 2 hours."), and a certification can have a credential URL (a Credly or issuer page that verifies it). Fill them in from Edit Resume, or add them to resume.json:

{
  "certifications": [
    {
      "name": "AWS Certified Solutions Architect",
      "issuer": "AWS",
      "issueDate": "2023-05",
      "credentialUrl": "https://verify.example.com/cert/42"
    }
  ],
  "projects": [
    {
      "name": "Ledger",
      "description": "Reconciliation tool.",
      "url": "https://ledger.example.com",
      "repoUrl": "https://github.com/example/ledger",
      "demoUrl": "https://demo.example.com",
      "techStack": ["Go", "PostgreSQL"],
      "outcome": "Cut reconciliation from 2 days to 2 hours.",
      "highlights": []
    }
  ]
}

The HTML, Word, and PDF exports print the links by default (see projectLinks) and leave the rest out until you turn them on with the settings above. A resume.json saved by an earlier version, without these fields, keeps working unchanged.

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.