Create CVs and Cover Letters in Markdown and Render to PDF with Typst and Pandoc

Overview

This project allows you to write your CV and cover letter in Markdown and generate PDFs using Typst and Pandoc. It supports both public and private versions (includes private details like phone numbers).

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Getting Started

1. Clone the repository and open it as a development container.
2. Use the following commands for rendering:
   • just build: Generates the public version (excludes private details like phone numbers).
   • just build-private: Generates the private version (includes private details).

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Generating Private Versions

By default, running just build creates a public version that omits sensitive details. To create private versions:

1. Rename .env.example to .env.
2. Enter your private details (phone number and email) in the .env file.
3. Run just build-private to render the private version.

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File Format

Both the CV and cover letter are written in Markdown. Metadata and special features are defined in the YAML header.

Metadata Fields

Include the following fields in the YAML header for your CV or cover letter:

For both CV and cover letter:

• author: Your name.
• title: Job title or position.
• public-email: Publicly available email address.
• github, gitlab, linkedin: Your usernames on these platforms.
• website: Your website URL (without the protocol).
• date: Custom creation date (format: year: YYYY, month: M, day: D).
• keywords: Keywords for PDF metadata.
• links: Dictionary of keywords and URLs to auto-convert keywords into hyperlinks.

Additional fields for cover letters:

• to: Recipient's address.
• from: Your address.

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Features and Usage

Adding Hyperlinks to Keywords

A Pandoc filter (linkify.lua) converts keywords in your document into hyperlinks. To enable:

1. Add a links dictionary in the YAML metadata.
2. Define keywords and their corresponding URLs. See CV example

The commands just build and just build-private apply this filter by default.

Right-Side Content in CVs

You can display content (e.g., profile picture, location, dates) on the right side of your CV. To enable add metadata (key="value") to the heading you want to associate with side content.

Supported keys:

• photo: Typst block with your profile image.
• location: Typst block with location details.
• date: Typst block with dates.

Example:

## Multitel ASBL {location="Mons \\ Belgium"}

_Non-profit innovation center_

### Research Engineer {date="Jul.~2021 \\ Aug.~2024"}

Developed a THz time-domain spectroscopy (THz-TDS) data pipeline with an improved signal-to-noise ratio using sensitivity profile-shaped filtering.

Note: Use \\ for line breaks in Typst blocks (Pandoc strips single \).

Known Issue

Side content automatically starts a new paragraph after the heading. To avoid extra spacing, structure your content accordingly.

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Hiding Section Titles

Section titles can be hidden (invisible to humans but visible to bots) to save space and maintain structure. To hide a title add .hidden to the heading metadata.

Example:

# Professional Experience {.hidden}

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Full-Width Bibliography with Ordered Lists

In CVs and cover letters, most content is constrained to a limited width for better readability. However, bibliographic references do not require the same level of readability and are optimized to occupy minimal space. To achieve this use ordered lists for bibliographic references, and they automatically span the full width of the document.

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Examples

CV Example

Below is a minimal example of a CV in Markdown. For a detailed example, see kadykov-cv-en.md. Rendered PDFs are hosted on GitHub Pages.

---
author: Aleksandr KADYKOV
title: Research Engineer
public-email: cv@kadykov.com
github: kadykov
gitlab: kadykov
linkedin: aleksandr-kadykov
website: www.kadykov.com
keywords:
  - résumé
  - resume
  - CV
links:
  TDS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_time-domain_spectroscopy
  THz: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_radiation

---

# Research Engineer {photo='image("./photo.jpg", width: 120pt)'}

Headline of your CV

# Core Competencies {.hidden}

- Data analysis & presentation
- Experimental design & execution
- Instrumentation integration & orchestration
- Scientific Python development

# Professional Experience {.hidden}

---

## Multitel ASBL {location="Mons \\ Belgium"}

_Company description._

### Research Engineer {date="Jul.~2021 \\ Aug.~2024"}

Your explanation of what you have done.