CVAurum

CVAurum is an open-source, AGPL-3.0 resume studio that runs entirely client-side in the browser, with no account, no backend, no analytics, and no tracking. It builds ATS-ready resumes from 75 data-driven templates and exports vector PDFs that conform to PDF/A-2B and PDF/UA-1.

What is CVAurum?

CVAurum is a privacy-first resume builder written in React 18, Vite and TypeScript that runs entirely in the browser with zero backend. It takes resume content typed directly on the page (or imported from a PDF or JSON Resume file) and produces archives-grade PDF, Word (.docx) and JSON Resume exports. It is published under AGPL-3.0-only, copyright Akhil Dara.

Key Features

• 75 templates and the Signature collection — 68 registry configs plus thirteen Signature designs (Broadsheet, Marquee, Atlas, Chronicle, Folio Noir, Terrace, Flare, Dossier, Keystone, Meridian, Schematic, Volta, Punch) that restructure the page rather than recolor it; all thirteen are single-column and ATS-safe.
• Native vector PDF engine — PDFs are drawn by CVAurum's own renderer in src/lib/pdf/ with no print-dialog fallback, producing selectable text at roughly 50 KB, tagged for PDF/UA-1 and validated for PDF/A-2B against veraPDF on every release.
• Deterministic ATS analysis — a per-ATS parse simulation emulating Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo and iCIMS, plus an on-device writing coach using string analysis only, no LLM and no network call.
• In-browser PDF import — text-based PDFs are parsed into editable sections; scanned PDFs fall back to on-device Tesseract OCR, self-hosted with nothing uploaded.
• Magic fit and per-section styling — type and spacing size to a 1, 2 or 3-page target within rules; 8 heading styles, 4 skills layouts and 4 entry layouts switch per section on the canvas.
• AES-256 encrypted share links — resume payload rides in the URL fragment, encrypted with AES-256-GCM and a key stretched via PBKDF2-SHA-256 at 600k iterations.
• Offline PWA — installable via vite-plugin-pwa and Workbox; all 45 fonts are bundled and self-hosted, so the app makes zero external requests.
• Tech stack — Tailwind CSS v3, Zustand with zundo undo/redo, dnd-kit, Framer Motion, TipTap, Zod validation, idb-keyval for IndexedDB and the docx library for Word export.

Who should use CVAurum?

• Privacy-conscious job seekers: people unwilling to upload career history to a resume SaaS can build and export locally, with data kept in browser IndexedDB until they choose to export.
• Applicants targeting large employers: candidates applying through Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, Taleo or iCIMS can run the parse simulation and check the plain-text "What ATS sees" view before submitting.
• Developers and self-hosters: anyone can run npm install and npm run dev on Node 18.18 or newer with no Docker, Postgres or headless Chromium.

Use cases

• Recruiters' blind spots: paste a job description into the tailoring panel to see matched versus missing keywords and a live match score while adjusting the resume.
• Career changers with an old PDF: drop an existing resume PDF into the importer to reconstruct structured, editable sections without retyping.
• Accessibility and archival needs: export a document that is tagged for screen readers and meets PDF/A-2B, verified against veraPDF (144/144 and 106/106 rules, zero failures).

How does CVAurum work?

Run npm install && npm run dev on Node 18.18 or newer, then open http://localhost:5173. Edit text directly on the resume canvas or in the side panel, pick a template, run ATS analysis, and export PDF, .docx or JSON Resume. Work autosaves in a debounced write to IndexedDB.

Pricing

CVAurum is free and open source under AGPL-3.0-only. A commercial licence is required to use it or its code in a closed-source product or an unpublished hosted service; earlier releases were MIT-licensed.

FAQ

Is CVAurum free?

Yes. CVAurum is released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 and can be used, studied, modified and self-hosted freely, provided the author's credit is kept and complete source is published under the same licence.

Does CVAurum send my resume to a server?

No. There is no backend, no analytics and no cookies. Fonts are bundled, exports are generated in the browser, and resume data is stored locally in IndexedDB. The only outbound path is an encrypted share link you create yourself.

What export formats does CVAurum support?

CVAurum exports vector PDF (the only PDF path, with no print-dialog fallback), Word .docx in a single-column ATS-friendly layout, and JSON Resume files, which round-trip with the wider JSON Resume ecosystem via a namespaced metadata field.

Are CVAurum's PDFs accessible?

Yes. Every PDF is tagged for PDF/UA-1 with reading order preserved, and validated against veraPDF as PDF/A-2B archival as well, across single-page, two-column, image-heavy and multi-page documents.