ResumeBuilder

A cross-platform desktop resume builder: edit a resume in a live editor, see a real-time PDF preview, pick from 25 templates, and export to PDF, DOCX, HTML, PNG, plain text, or JSON Resume.

Your resume never leaves your machine. No account, no upload, no cloud. Resumes are stored in a local SQLite database, and the AI features can run against a local model (Ollama, LM Studio) so even those work fully offline.

Download

On Windows, the quickest route is winget, which also skips the SmartScreen prompt, since winget installs through its own trusted client:

winget install Gentian28.ResumeBuilder

Or grab the latest build from the releases page.

Platform	Download	Notes
Windows	ResumeBuilder-win-Setup.exe	Installer, updates itself. win-Portable.zip if you'd rather not install.
Linux	ResumeBuilder.AppImage	chmod +x and run. Needs libfontconfig1, present on most desktops.
macOS, Apple silicon	ResumeBuilder-osx-Setup.pkg	M1 and later. See the Gatekeeper note below.
macOS, Intel	ResumeBuilder-osx-x64-Setup.pkg	2019 and earlier. An Apple silicon build will not run on Intel.

Not sure which Mac you have? Apple menu → About This Mac.

No .NET runtime needed: every build is self-contained.

SHA256SUMS-*.txt is published with every release so you can verify what you downloaded.

Code signing

Windows builds are not yet code-signed. An application to the SignPath Foundation free-signing programme was declined in July 2026 (the programme wants public adoption signals a brand-new project doesn't have yet) and will be resubmitted once the project has them. Until then, the direct download triggers SmartScreen's "unknown publisher" warning (choose More info → Run anyway), while installing via winget avoids it entirely. macOS Gatekeeper likewise refuses the package until you allow it under System Settings → Privacy & Security; that needs Apple notarisation, which is separate from code signing and not yet in place.

Privacy

The app has no account, no telemetry and no analytics. See PRIVACY.md for exactly what is stored and the three cases where it touches the network.

Features

• Live preview: the editor renders the selected template to a paged PDF preview as you type.
• 25 resume templates: Modern, Classic, Minimal, Creative, Executive, Technical, Academic, Two Column, Compact, Elegant, Professional, Starter, Simple, Timeline, Bold, Dark Sidebar, Infographic, ATS Plain, Chronology, Color Block, Developer, Europass, Federal, One Page, Photo Header, plus 3 cover-letter templates.
• Section ordering and visibility: reorder or hide any section, including custom sections.
• Export: PDF, DOCX, HTML, PNG, plain text (ATS-friendly), native JSON, and JSON Resume.
• Import: JSON Resume, native JSON, LinkedIn data export (.zip), and PDF text extraction.
• Spell check: Hunspell, with a personal dictionary.
• ATS keyword analysis: paste a job description to get a match score, matched/missing keywords, and warnings.
• AI assistance: optional; works against OpenAI or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including a local LLM (Ollama, LM Studio).
• Undo/redo: across text edits and list operations.
• Sync: two-way sync through a local folder, with conflict detection. The sync panel finds your Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox or iCloud folder and offers it as one button; no account, no upload.
• Applications: track which résumé went to which company, when, and what happened; one click reopens the exact version they read. Anything silent for more than a fortnight is marked worth chasing.
• Backups before upgrades: the database is copied before any upgrade that changes its schema, and the last three copies are kept.

Requirements

• .NET 8 SDK or later
• Windows, macOS, or Linux (the UI is Avalonia)

Getting started

git clone https://github.com/Gentian28/resume-builder.git
cd resume-builder

dotnet restore ResumeBuilder.sln
dotnet build ResumeBuilder.sln
dotnet run --project src/ResumeBuilder.App/ResumeBuilder.App

Run the tests:

dotnet test ResumeBuilder.sln

samples/sample-resume.json is a synthetic JSON Resume file you can import to see the app populated.

Project layout

The solution is layered; each project depends only on the ones above it.

Project	Responsibility
ResumeBuilder.Core	Domain models, validation, undo/redo, spell check, keyword analysis, AI, sync. No UI, no persistence.
ResumeBuilder.Data	EF Core + SQLite persistence. Owns the Resume schema and repository.
ResumeBuilder.Templates	QuestPDF template implementations and the template registry.
ResumeBuilder.Export	Exporters (PDF/DOCX/HTML/PNG/TXT/JSON) and importers (JSON Resume, LinkedIn, PDF).
ResumeBuilder.App	Avalonia desktop UI (MVVM, CommunityToolkit.Mvvm).
ResumeBuilder.Tests	xUnit tests across Core, Data, Export, and Templates.

Dependency direction: App → {Core, Data, Templates, Export}, Export → {Core, Templates}, Data → Core, Templates → Core.

Where things live

• Data storage: %LocalAppData%/ResumeBuilder/resumes.db (SQLite). Created on first run; schema upgrades are applied automatically by DatabaseInitializer.
• Dictionaries: %LocalAppData%/ResumeBuilder/Dictionaries/ (downloaded on first spell check).
• Sync state: %LocalAppData%/ResumeBuilder/sync-state.json.

Adding a template

1. Add a class under ResumeBuilder.Templates/Templates/ deriving from BaseTemplate.
2. Fill in its Info (Id, Name, Description, Category, Layout, and its default accent color / font).
3. Drive the body from GetOrderedSections() and ShouldRenderSection(...) so the user's section order and visibility are honored, and use the shared Compose* helpers on BaseTemplate for standard blocks.
4. Register it in TemplateRegistry.

The template smoke test renders every registered template against a fully populated resume, so a new template is covered as soon as it is registered.

Configuration

The AI features are off until configured. They target any OpenAI-compatible /chat/completions endpoint:

• OpenAI: supply an API key. Requests (including your resume text) go to api.openai.com.
• Local LLM: point the base URL at a loopback address (Ollama, LM Studio). No key is needed and nothing leaves your machine.

License

MIT, © 2026 Gentian Shkembi.

Every dependency is OSI-licensed. One is worth knowing about if you fork this for commercial work: QuestPDF, which renders every template, is MIT for open-source projects, non-profits and companies under $1M USD annual revenue, and requires a paid licence above that. It does not affect using, forking or redistributing this project.

(The test suite used to depend on FluentAssertions 8.x, which moved to the non-OSI Xceed Community License permitting non-commercial use only, meaning a commercial fork could not legally run the tests. It now uses AwesomeAssertions, the Apache-2.0 community fork.)