I built PDF Designer because job boards keep rewarding keyword soup while real people are trying to tell an honest story about their work. It is a local resume studio: your claims live in a private vault on disk, your palette preferences stay yours, and the tool prints two versions of the same resume — a light PDF for ATS uploads and a dark branded PDF for people.

This post is the landing page for that toolkit. The engine is ready. The GitHub repo is scrubbed and still private; the clone URL goes here the moment that switch happens. Until then, this is the honest walkthrough of what the studio actually does.

Why I built this

Most “AI resume” tools want a cloud account, a keyword dump, and permission to invent a prettier version of you. I wanted the opposite: a studio that will not write a claim the vault does not back.

The gap-check is the small rule with the big effect. Before a job-specific resume changes, the workflow checks what you have actually said is true. If a listing asks for something the vault does not mention, the tool asks instead of treating an incomplete record as a deficiency. The document stays yours.

That is also why there are two PDFs, not one fancy layout that job boards shred. Light is the upload. Dark is the branded send. Same pagination. Same facts.

What makes it different

The vault is the starting point. Claims live on disk. The renderer is not allowed to fill holes with soup.
Design Hub on localhost. The visual home is http://127.0.0.1:8787/ — not another SaaS dashboard that owns your history.
ATS-honest light + branded dark. One engine, two themes, same page breaks. Upload the light file to boards.
Checks that pretty mockups skip. Palette safety, content overflow, rendered color, and whether the light PDF still has a text layer a parser can read.
No .env, no cloud account. Personal JSON, working HTML, exports, and job folders stay gitignored. Public examples show the shape of the workflow without publishing anyone's vault.

The quotable bit: two PDFs from one vault — light for the board, dark for the human — and a gap-check that asks before it invents.

How the free toolkit works

Once the public repo is live, the clone path is:

Start from examples/resume-studio/ and the documented example shapes (Jane Example is the stranger-safe template).
Run python -m pdf_tool.preview to open the Design Hub on your machine.
Keep claims in a private vault. Skills tags and palette prefs stay local.
Export light and dark PDFs. Board upload = light only.
Run the generation and ATS checks before you send anything.

The public examples are the Jennifer Nexus pack (public first name + Nexus + [email protected], no phone) plus Jane Example for clones. They are screenshots of the Hub, not anyone's real job folder.

Who it's for

People who want a résumé workflow that will not invent claims
Applicants who still have to please an ATS and a human
Devs and agents who prefer a local Python tool over a cloud form
Anyone who is tired of Canva pagination fighting a job-board parser

If you just want a pretty PDF and you do not care whether the board can parse it, this is not that product. If you want the document to stay yours, it is.

What comes next

The free release is the engine, Design Hub, themes, layouts, checks, and examples. A future paid option, if it earns its place, would be a simple installer and guided wizard around that same local engine — not a second renderer and not a subscription that owns your career data.

I am not listing a Gumroad pack until that installer exists. The honest ask today is a tip if the walkthrough helps:

Other tools already live on the Products page — Site Auditor, Syn Themes, and fin-sig. PDF Designer joins that shelf as a downloadable SKU when GitHub is public.

The clone URL goes here after the public switch. Until then: the studio is local, the stills are the public-brand Hub pack, and the document stays yours.

— Jenni