Show HN: How I built a resume editor using AI with zero web dev experience(tailortojob.app)
tailortojob.app
Show HN: How I built a resume editor using AI with zero web dev experience
https://www.tailortojob.app/
7 comments
From a non-technical user... I used Chat and Claude to tailor my resumes depending on the position and what not. I completely agree with your take on building "experiences" that you can recycle depending on the job. What I had personally found, is that it takes a while to dive through all my "experiences" and recall everything I did in specific jobs. I ended up going on voice mode and having a natural convo with the AI and have it ask me questions like a psychologist. We were able to extract a ton of experiences without the fatigue of having to figure that part out. I wonder if that would ever hit your users because this was my main barrier to even try free tools that did this.
That is an excellent idea! I had experimented with chat based approaches but that was not very successful. Would you mind sharing your approach for the voice mode? I would love to understand it better!
Absolutely.
I honestly worked out a big converation about indrustries that I wanted to explore and landed on a prompt like... you are my career coach... ask me any relevant questions that would help you clearly understand my strenghths, skills and experiences so we can use the STAR method later when building a resume for x industry. The chat was honestly pretty good at asking those questions once it had my resume. "Have you ever had to fire someone? Why?"- This led to uncovering a time when the team had to go and ended up in a prety good experience: "Built a team of X people from stratch that led to X metric increasing etc. " This was gold for me.
I honestly worked out a big converation about indrustries that I wanted to explore and landed on a prompt like... you are my career coach... ask me any relevant questions that would help you clearly understand my strenghths, skills and experiences so we can use the STAR method later when building a resume for x industry. The chat was honestly pretty good at asking those questions once it had my resume. "Have you ever had to fire someone? Why?"- This led to uncovering a time when the team had to go and ended up in a prety good experience: "Built a team of X people from stratch that led to X metric increasing etc. " This was gold for me.
That is awesome! Thanks a lot! I will experiment with it and see what I can do.
Good stuff getting this shipped with no web experience, that's a real accomplishment. Used agents to build some internal security tooling at a previous role and found the high/low model split invaluable for keeping costs down and maintaining focus.
The "tutorial trap" is spot on; seen that play out too many times. Most users just want to jump in and figure things out. If it isn't intuitive, they'll bounce. Prioritization of features is always key, especially when you can build things quickly.
The "tutorial trap" is spot on; seen that play out too many times. Most users just want to jump in and figure things out. If it isn't intuitive, they'll bounce. Prioritization of features is always key, especially when you can build things quickly.
The "tutorial trap" you hit is so relatable; I've found that users almost deliberately avoid tutorials, even when they're stuck. Your high/low model splitting for cost and performance is exactly the right strategy, I've seen that work wonders.
On the voice mode idea, I think that's where the real value is for something like this; getting those unstated experiences out of people without them feeling like they're writing a report.
On the voice mode idea, I think that's where the real value is for something like this; getting those unstated experiences out of people without them feeling like they're writing a report.
I was really surprised by the users' behavior. It is a good lesson to learn.
Totally agree! That would be super helpful!
Totally agree! That would be super helpful!
I have recently been applying for summer internships and got frustrated when tailoring my resumes in Word. I started learning Python last autumn, but had absolutely zero experience with web development or deploying something to the front/backend. I wanted to experiment with the new coding agents to build a resume editor that would make my application process less painful.
Here it is: www.tailortojob.app
How I built it: A friend helped me set up the initial infrastructure because I struggled to connect everything with Claude alone (newer models might be more helpful; that was 4 months ago). The stack is Vercel, Render, and Supabase. Once the front- and backend were set up, I used agents iteratively over the last 4 months to build the actual application (I have probably spent on average about 10 hours per week, so a total of about 180-200 hours)
My Agent Workflow: High/Low Model Split: What worked best was using larger models (Opus 4.6 has been a game-changer) to brainstorm an implementation plan in Markdown, and then handing that off to smaller models to do the actual coding. I felt this gave me a good balance between performance and costs. I recently started exploring Claude's planning mode, which I am considering using instead of my old approach.
UI Struggles: While Claude’s newer UI skills are great for quickly building a frontend, I found it often struggled with perfectly aligning hover overlays with other elements on the page (maybe my prompts were not precise enough; it often took me a couple of tries to get it right)
Knowledge Cutoffs: When asking agents to implement new LLM APIs (like GPT 5.1 mini), they would often tell me they did not exist, and I should use models like 4o. This was especially annoying when I asked Claude to find errors in my code. It would often tell me that I am using models that do not exist. I learned I had to manually feed Claude the new API documentation during the session to get it working.
My Biggest Lesson: The "Tutorial Trap" Because AI makes it so easy to simply build whatever you can think of, I believe prioritization becomes extremely important. Case in point: I spent 5 hours the night before launching to my friends, building a detailed interactive tutorial. In the end, not a single person used it. Several friends even told me they could not figure out a feature, knew the tutorial existed, and still chose to just give up rather than watch it. I was really surprised.
My approach definitely was not perfect, but it was impressive to see what is possible nowadays with hardly any prior coding experience.
I would love for you to try out the editor and let me know how I can make it more useful. I am also very curious to hear tips from this community on how I can refine my agent workflows.
Thank you for your time and help!