Cover Letter Builder

Cover Letter Builder

Inputs

| Field | Source | |---|---| | Job title | User message or job posting | | Company name | User message or job posting | | Job description | Pasted text, or file path to a .pdf / .txt | | CV / resume | File path (.pdf, .md, .tex, .txt) or pasted text — asked in Step 0 if not provided | | Application channel | Default: standard; options: linkedin | | Repo path | Default: current working directory (.) |

If any required field is missing and cannot be inferred, ask once — all at once.

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Step 0: Intake

Run this before scanning the repo.

Has the user already provided a CV, resume, or background text?
  YES → proceed to Step 1 with that as the primary source
  NO  → ask the user (single message):

> "Do you have an existing CV or resume? If yes, provide the file path or paste the text > here. If not, I'll scan the current repo for your background."

Also confirm the job description is complete. If the user only provided a job title and company name, ask for the full JD now.

If the user has no CV and the repo scan (Step 1) finds nothing useful: switch to inline intake — ask these questions in one message:

• Current role and company
• 2-3 most relevant past roles (title, company, one key outcome each)
• Top 5-6 skills most relevant to the target role
• Education (brief)

Use the answers as the profile source.

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Step 1: Scan Sources

If the user provided a CV file (Step 0)

Use it as the primary source. Extract text based on format:

PDF:

# Best layout preservation (poppler-utils)
pdftotext -layout cv.pdf -

Fallback chain:

1. pdftotext -layout file.pdf -
2. pdftotext file.pdf -
3. If pdftotext is unavailable: tell the user and ask them to paste the CV text

Markdown / plain text: read directly — no transformation needed.

LaTeX: strip commands, extract readable text:

sed 's/\\[a-zA-Z]*{[^}]*}//g; s/\\[a-zA-Z]*//g; s/[{}]//g'

Or pandoc -t plain file.tex if available.

Repo scan (supplementary — always runs)

Recursively scan the repo for additional context not in the CV.

Priority targets:

• *.md, *.txt, *.tex, *.rst — prose, CVs, bios, READMEs
• resume.*, cv.*, about.*, bio.*, profile.* (any extension)
• CLAUDE.md or claude.md — may contain identity/context
• *.pdf matching cv* or resume* naming — extract via pdftotext
• Any file with keywords: experience, skills, education, projects, work, career, background

Skip:

• node_modules/, .git/, vendor/, dist/, build/, *.lock, *.log, binaries

Extract from all sources:

• Name, contact info
• Work history: company, title, dates, key responsibilities
• Skills: technical, tools, languages, platforms
• Education
• Projects: name, description, tech used, outcomes
• Achievements, metrics, certifications

Merge all sources. Prefer the explicit CV as primary; use repo content to fill gaps or add project detail. Synthesize into a single internal profile. Do not write this to disk.

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Step 2: Research the Company

Before writing, gather signals about the company's culture and communication style:

• Tone of the job posting: casual and direct (startup) vs. structured (enterprise) vs. mission-heavy (nonprofit/social impact)
• Company handbook / careers page: GitLab, Basecamp, Buffer, Automattic, and others publish their values and how they hire — read them if available
• Recent blog / engineering posts: shows what they care about technically and what language they use
• Repeated keywords in the JD: if "ownership", "shipping", "scale", "trust", or "craft" appear more than once, mirror them naturally in the letter

This research takes 2 minutes and is the difference between a generic letter and one that reads like the candidate did their homework.

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Step 3: Analyze the Job Posting

Parse for:

• Must-haves: required skills, years of experience, specific tools
• Nice-to-haves: preferred qualifications
• Role context: team size, product area, company stage, mission
• Tone signals: startup vs enterprise, technical vs cross-functional
• Terminology to mirror: specific words they repeat

---

Step 4: Match Profile to Posting

Build a relevance map:

• Which experiences directly match the role's requirements?
• Which projects demonstrate the core skills?
• What are the strongest 2-3 signals to lead with?
• Any gaps? Bridge honestly with adjacent experience or trajectory — never fabricate.

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Step 5: Select Channel Format

Standard (default) — full cover letter

• 4 paragraphs, 250–380 words, hard cap 400
• Structure:

1. Opening — your strongest result or clearest signal, directly tied to the role. Do not open with "I am excited to". Lead with what you bring, not how you feel.
2. Body 1 — match 2-3 job requirements to specific outcomes with numbers and the job's own keywords
3. Body 2 — something specific about this company that shows you read more than the job title; connect it to why this role at this company makes sense for you
4. Closing — one sentence of intent, one sentence CTA. No "please find attached", no "do not hesitate"

LinkedIn Easy Apply — short cover note

Use when applying through LinkedIn. LinkedIn cover notes are read on mobile, in a narrow column, and hiring managers skim them in seconds.

• 100–150 words, single block of prose, no line breaks between sentences
• Lead with your strongest match to the role
• One company-specific sentence
• End with availability and contact preference
• No letterhead, no date, no signature block
• No Markdown formatting — plain text only

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Step 6: Write the Cover Letter

Structure (standard format)

[City, Date — optional, infer from repo if available]

[Hiring Manager name / "Hiring Team" if unknown]
[Company Name]

[Opening paragraph]

[Body paragraph 1]

[Body paragraph 2]

[Closing paragraph]

[Name]
[Contact — if found in repo]

Writing Rules (anti-AI-polish — enforce these strictly)

Do:

• Write like a sharp professional who knows their value — direct, confident, no hedging
• Use specific numbers, names, outcomes when available ("reduced P95 latency by 40%", "led migration of 3 services")
• Vary sentence length deliberately — short punches, longer explanations, not uniform rhythm
• Start sentences mid-thought when natural ("Three years building X taught me...")
• Use contractions where they read naturally ("I've", "it's", "that's")
• Reference something specific about the company from your Step 2 research
• Let personality show in 1-2 places — not every sentence

Do NOT:

• Use any of these phrases: "I am excited to", "I am passionate about", "thrilled", "leverage", "synergy", "utilize", "fast-paced environment", "team player", "detail-oriented", "results-driven", "I would be a great fit", "please find attached", "do not hesitate", "I am writing to express"
• Open with "I" as the first word of the letter
• Use the em dash (—) as a stylistic flourish more than once
• Use bullet points inside the letter body
• Summarize the job description back to the employer
• Start consecutive sentences with the same word
• Use passive voice where active works ("was responsible for" → "ran", "owned", "shipped")
• Write in lists or numbered points — prose only
• Use filler transitions: "Furthermore", "Additionally", "In conclusion", "To summarize"
• Write every sentence to the same length — ATS and human reviewers both flag uniform rhythm as a model signature
• Use abstract nouns doing verb work: "facilitation of", "enablement of", "optimization of"
• Pair adjectives in threes: "dedicated, hardworking, and results-oriented"
• Use "not only X, but also Y" constructions — a strong model tell

Tone calibration:

• Startup / early-stage: tight, direct, drop formality, show builder instinct
• Enterprise / corporate: structured, reference scale and process
• Mission-driven: acknowledge the mission briefly but don't perform enthusiasm
• Technical-first companies (Stripe, Linear, Cloudflare): precise language, show you think clearly in writing

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Step 7: Grammar & Quality Gate

Run this pass on the full draft before writing to disk. Fix everything in-place.

Grammar checks

• Subject-verb agreement throughout
• Tense consistency — past for previous roles, present for current
• Article usage: "a" vs "an", missing articles before nouns
• Preposition correctness ("responsible for", not "responsible of")
• Comma splices — split or join with a conjunction
• Dangling modifiers — subject of opening clause must match main clause subject
• Pronoun clarity — no ambiguous "it", "they", "this" without clear referent
• Hyphenation: compound modifiers before nouns ("full-stack engineer", "five-year track record")

Sentence quality checks

• No sentence over 35 words — break it up
• No two consecutive sentences starting with the same word
• No consecutive sentences of similar length — vary rhythm
• Each paragraph has a single clear purpose; if it doesn't, rewrite or cut
• Cut words that don't earn their place: "very", "really", "quite", "just", "actually", "basically", "essentially"
• Cut throat-clearing openers: "As someone who...", "Throughout my career...", "With X years of experience..."

Authenticity re-check

• Re-scan for banned phrases from the Do NOT list — they creep back in during revision
• Verify no sentence reads like it was generated by a language model:
• Overly balanced "not only X, but also Y" constructions
• Suspiciously perfect parallelism across all clauses
• Abstract nouns doing verb work ("facilitation of", "enablement of")
• Every sentence approximately the same length
• At least one sentence must feel like this specific person wrote it — grounded in a real detail from their background

Quality bar

The letter passes when:

• A native English speaker finds nothing to correct
• It reads like a sharp professional wrote it, not like a template was filled in
• Every claim is traceable to something in the repo scan
• Cutting any paragraph would make the letter weaker
• The company-specific reference in Body 2 is concrete, not generic ("I've been following your work on X" is not concrete; citing a specific post, product decision, or value is)

If the draft does not pass, rewrite the failing sections and re-check. Do not output a letter that doesn't clear this bar.

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Step 8: Output

Filename format

--.md

Rules for slug:

• Lowercase, hyphens only, no special chars
• Company: acme-corp, stripe, scale-ai
• Position: senior-backend-engineer, staff-sre, founding-engineer
• Date: today's date

Example: 2026-05-03-stripe-staff-platform-engineer.md

File content format

Detect format before writing — in priority order:

1. User specified a format → use it exactly
2. Existing cover letter files found in repo → mirror structure (header style, date format, signature block)
3. No prior format found → use the default below

Default:

# Cover Letter — [Position] at [Company]

[Date]

[Body of the letter]

---
_Review before sending._

When mirroring: preserve section order, delimiter style, metadata fields — only replace body content.

Write the file to the current working directory (or repo root if specified).

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Step 9: Report to User

After writing:

1. State the output path
2. Show the letter in full for review
3. List the top 3 repo sources used (filename → what was extracted)
4. Flag any gaps between the job requirements and what was found in the repo

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Edge Cases

| Situation | Handling | |---|---| | No relevant files found, no CV provided | Use inline intake (Step 0): ask current role, key experiences, top skills, education | | Only a README found | Extract what's there; note it's thin; produce best-effort letter | | User provides a PDF CV | Extract via pdftotext; ask user to paste text if tool unavailable | | User pastes CV text directly | Parse it directly; no file extraction needed | | Multiple CV/resume files | Merge; prefer the explicit CV from Step 0, then the most recent by filename | | LaTeX with complex macros | Use pandoc first; fall back to regex strip | | Job description is vague/short | Ask for one clarifying detail: what does "success" look like in year 1? | | Company name has spaces/symbols | Slugify: Scale AI → scale-ai, Acme Corp. → acme-corp | | No company handbook/public values found | Rely on tone signals from the job posting alone | | LinkedIn channel selected | Output plain-text cover note (100–150 words), no Markdown, no letterhead |

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: widnyana
• Source: widnyana/eyay-toolkits
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.