I built a free, privacy-first CV maker to make job hunting a little less stressful

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine was preparing to apply for new roles and asked for my help formatting their resume. It was formatted in a Word document where the tables and margins were constantly shifting, making it difficult to keep everything looking neat and aligned.

To make things easier, we started looking for online resume builders.

We found some beautiful tools, but we noticed a common theme: after spending time entering work history, achievements, and education, the download process felt complicated. Some sites required creating accounts and handing over personal contact info before exporting, while others placed watermarks or subscription prompt screens at the final step.

Job hunting is already a stressful process. Between tailoring cover letters, preparing for interviews, and waiting for callbacks, there is a lot to manage. I felt that formatting a resume or exporting a PDF shouldn't add to that friction.

People looking for new opportunities deserve a direct, clean tool that helps them put their best foot forward—without any barriers or having to sign up for another account.

So, I sat down and built a simple, free, and privacy-focused CV maker: cv.sytes.dev.

I designed it to help my friend, and now I'm sharing it in the hope that it makes the process a bit smoother for others, too.

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What is this app?

It's a clean workspace designed to help you create a professional, readable resume, check it against job keywords, and download a print-ready PDF in a few minutes.

Here is how it is designed to help you:

1. 100% Private (No accounts required)

Your career history and contact details belong to you. There is no signup button, and we don't store your details on any external database. Everything you type stays securely in your browser's local storage. You can close the tab, come back later, and your resume will be exactly where you left it.

2. A Simple Form with Live Preview

Instead of fighting with margins, tabs, or shifting text blocks in a word processor, you just fill out a clean form on the left. The formatted resume updates instantly in a live print preview pane on the right, showing you exactly how it will look on the page.

3. Optimized for ATS (Applicant Tracking Systems)

Many job seekers feel pressured to make their resumes look visually complex, using skill rating bars, colorful charts, or side-by-side columns.

However, many recruiters and automated screening tools prefer simple, clean, and linear layouts. Visual graphics and chart bars can be difficult for scanning software to read, which sometimes scrambles your text.

This builder offers layouts that are clean and professional for human eyes, yet perfectly structured for scanning software:

• Classic: Clean, centered headers with traditional serif fonts.

• Modern: A contemporary layout with clean, left-aligned sections.

• Split Column: A two-column visual layout designed in a way that scanning software still reads your details in a perfect, top-to-bottom sequence.

4. Tailor your resume to the job description (and how to use AI to your advantage)

Sending a generic resume to dozens of jobs is rarely effective. The best way to stand out is to align your resume with the specific language of the role you want.

But there is a right way and a wrong way to use AI on your resume:

• The wrong way: Letting AI write your resume from scratch. It results in generic corporate jargon and "hallucinated" achievements that you can't back up in an interview.

• The right way: Using AI as a coach to analyze your real experiences. It can help you spot keyword gaps (like finding out the job description asks for "stakeholder communication" when you wrote "talked to clients") and help you rephrase achievements to highlight measurable outcomes.

To make this easier, I built in an AI assistant that does exactly this:

• Resume Scorer: You paste the job description, and the AI analyzes your CV against it, giving you a match score out of 100.

• Keyword Matching: It lists the keywords you successfully included and shows you the ones you missed, so you can naturally weave them into your history.

• Constructive Feedback: It gives you direct suggestions on how to improve your bullet points, keeping them grounded strictly in the facts you provided.

How to get a free OpenRouter key to run this:

Because the app has no database and stores nothing on a server, it uses your own OpenRouter key. This keeps your data completely private and under your control. Getting a key takes less than two minutes and won't cost you anything:

1. Go to openrouter.ai and create a free account.

2. Go to your dashboard settings and click on Keys.

3. Click Create Key (you can name it "CV Builder" or leave it blank).

4. Copy the generated key (it starts with sk-or-v1-...) and paste it into the AI settings in the CV builder.

5. In the model dropdown, select one of the high-quality free models available (like meta-llama/llama-3.1-8b-instruct:free).

That's it. Your key is stored safely in your own browser's local storage and connects directly to the AI model. You get advanced resume scoring and tailoring completely free, without any middleman reading your career data.

5. Fit everything on one page (The Spacing Slider)

Keeping a resume to a single page is a great way to keep it readable, but formatting it to fit can be tedious.

The app includes a Density Slider that lets you instantly adjust the spacing of your document between Compact, Comfortable, and Spacious. If your text overflows by just a couple of lines, a single slide adjusts the spacing to make it fit perfectly on one page.

6. Realistic templates to start with

To help you get started without staring at a blank screen or dummy "Lorem Ipsum" text, the app comes with realistic templates based on fictional characters (like Software Engineer Thomas Anderson or Operations Director Bruce Wayne). It gives you a clear example of how to write impact-focused bullet points.

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Free and Clean Exports

Once you are happy with your resume, you just click "Download PDF," which opens your browser's native print-to-PDF menu. The resulting document is a clean, high-resolution vector PDF with clickable links—no watermarks and no hidden fees.

Searching for a job is a major milestone, and having the right tools shouldn't feel like a hurdle. If you're currently applying for roles or refreshing your resume, I hope you find cv.sytes.dev helpful.