vita-cv 0.1.0

VITA — CV as Code : personal CV management CLI

VITA — CV as Code

One base CV. Infinite targeted variants. Zero duplicates.

vita-cv is a CLI tool that treats your resume like source code — versioned with git, branched per company, and built from LaTeX.

uv tool install vita-cv

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How It Works

VITA manages your CV using git branches:

Branch	Purpose
master	Your canonical base — the CV you're always proud of
gen-<role>	Domain-specific base (e.g. gen-swe, gen-ml)
etp-<company>-<role>	Tailored CV for a specific application (e.g. etp-google-swe)

Every time you apply somewhere, you create a branch. VITA tracks that in a registry so you never accidentally send the wrong version or apply twice.

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Prerequisites

• uv — install (pip install uv or curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh)
• Python 3.10+ — managed automatically by uv
• Git (must be in PATH)
• LaTeX — TeX Live or MiKTeX, with latexmk

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Quick Start

# 1. Install vita from PyPI as a persistent tool
uv tool install vita-cv
# → vita is now available globally in your terminal

# 2. Create your CV project directory
mkdir my-cv && cd my-cv

# 3. Initialize VITA (creates .vita/ and git repo)
vita init

# 4. Edit .vita/config.json — set your name
#    "author": "yourname"

# 5. Create your LaTeX CV (see below)
# ... write main.tex, sections/, etc.

# 6. Commit your base CV
git add .
git commit -m "base: initial CV"

# 7. Apply to a company
vita new etp google "software engineer"
# → creates branch etp-google-swe, updates registry

# 8. Tailor your CV for this job, then build
vita build

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Your CV Project Structure

After running vita init, your project should look like this:

my-cv/
├── main.tex              ← LaTeX entry point (you create this)
├── sections/             ← Modular CV sections (you create these)
│   ├── experience.tex
│   ├── education.tex
│   ├── skills.tex
│   └── ...
├── job.md                ← Paste job descriptions here (for AI prompts)
├── out/                  ← PDF output (auto-created on build)
│
└── .vita/                ← Auto-created by `vita init`
    ├── config.json       ← Your settings (author, output paths, etc.)
    ├── companies.json    ← Registry of all companies you've applied to
    ├── extensions.json   ← Your custom role aliases and languages
    └── logs/             ← CLI activity log

.vita/ is gitignored — your registry and config stay local.

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Files You Need to Create

VITA manages the .vita/ directory for you. You are responsible for the LaTeX files.

main.tex — Entry Point

Your main LaTeX file. VITA will compile this with latexmk. Example minimal structure:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\input{sections/experience}
\input{sections/education}
\input{sections/skills}

\end{document}

You can use any LaTeX CV class (e.g. moderncv, altacv, awesome-cv).

sections/ — Modular Content

Split your CV into files so each branch only touches relevant sections:

sections/
├── experience.tex   ← Work history (most frequently changed per company)
├── education.tex    ← Education
├── skills.tex       ← Skills (adjust keywords per role)
├── summary.tex      ← Optional: tailored headline
└── projects.tex     ← Optional

job.md — Job Description (for AI prompts)

When you run vita adapt or vita analyze, VITA looks for job.md in your project root. Paste the job posting there:

Company: Google
Role: Senior Software Engineer

[Paste full job description here]

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Configuration Reference

vita init creates .vita/config.json with these defaults:

{
  "author": "",
  "output_dir": "out",
  "output_filename": "cv-{author}.pdf",
  "tex_entry": "main.tex",
  "default_base_branch": "master",
  "allow_multiple_per_company": true,
  "warn_on_duplicate": true
}

Key	What it does
author	Your name — used in the PDF filename
output_dir	Where the compiled PDF goes (out/ by default)
output_filename	PDF name template. {author} is substituted automatically
tex_entry	Your LaTeX entry file (default: main.tex)
default_base_branch	The branch vita new checks out from if no base exists
allow_multiple_per_company	If false, blocks a second CV for the same company
warn_on_duplicate	If true, warns (but doesn't block) on duplicate company

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CLI Commands

vita init

Initialize VITA in the current directory. Creates .vita/, scaffolds config files, and runs git init.

vita init          # first-time setup
vita init --force  # wipe and re-initialize

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vita new etp <company> <role>

Create a new tailored CV branch for a job application.

vita new etp google "software engineer"
vita new etp openai ml
vita new etp stripe "backend engineer" --commit  # commit pending changes first

• Normalizes the role (software engineer → swe)
• Creates branch etp-<company>-<role> off your base branch
• Registers the company in .vita/companies.json
• Warns if you've already applied to this company

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vita status

See all companies, branches, and where you currently are.

vita status

VITA Status — yourname
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Current branch : etp-google-swe

Companies (2):
  google  [2 CVs]
    ├── etp-google-swe   base: gen-swe   ← you are here
    └── etp-google-ml    base: gen-ml

  meta  [1 CV] [LOCKED]
    └── etp-meta-swe     base: gen-swe

Base branches:
  gen-swe · gen-ml
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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vita sync

Reconcile the registry with your actual git branches. Useful if you created or deleted branches manually.

vita sync              # interactive
vita sync --dry-run    # preview only, no changes written
vita sync --auto       # apply all changes without prompting

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vita build

Compile your LaTeX CV to PDF using latexmk.

vita build

Output goes to out/cv-<author>.pdf (or whatever you configured).

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vita diff <company>

Show what changed in a company branch versus its base.

vita diff google

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vita lock / unlock <company>

Lock a company to prevent creating new CVs for it (e.g. you've accepted an offer).

vita lock amazon
vita unlock amazon

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vita analyze

Generate an AI prompt to analyze your CV against the job in job.md.

vita analyze

Saves the prompt to .vita/current_prompt.md. Open it and give it to your AI assistant.

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vita adapt [--language <code>]

Generate an AI prompt to tailor your CV to the job in job.md.

vita adapt               # English (default)
vita adapt --language fr # French
vita adapt --language ar # Arabic

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vita review

Generate an AI prompt to review and improve your CV in general.

vita review

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Typical Workflow

# Day 1 — Set up your CV project
uv tool install vita-cv
mkdir my-cv && cd my-cv
vita init
# → edit .vita/config.json (set author)
# → write main.tex and sections/

git add .
git commit -m "base: initial CV"

# Applying to a company
git checkout -b gen-swe         # create your domain baseline
# → tailor the CV for SWE roles generally
git add . && git commit -m "gen-swe: baseline"

vita new etp google "software engineer"
# → now on branch etp-google-swe

# Paste job description
echo "..." > job.md
vita analyze    # get analysis prompt
vita adapt      # get tailoring prompt
# → run prompts with AI, apply suggestions to sections/

vita build      # compile to PDF
# → out/cv-yourname.pdf

vita status     # review all companies

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Building the PDF

VITA uses latexmk automatically. If you need to build manually:

# Standard
latexmk -pdf -outdir=out main.tex

# With bibliography (BibTeX/Biber)
pdflatex -output-directory=out main.tex
biber --input-directory=out --output-directory=out main
pdflatex -output-directory=out main.tex
pdflatex -output-directory=out main.tex

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Extensibility

VITA ships with built-in role aliases and language codes. You can add your own in .vita/extensions.json (created by vita init):

{
  "role_aliases": {
    "research engineer": "re",
    "applied scientist": "as",
    "solutions architect": "sa"
  },
  "language_map": {
    "zh": "Chinese (Simplified)",
    "ja": "Japanese"
  }
}

Your entries are merged on top of the built-ins — your values win on conflict.

See EXTENSIONS.md for the full list of built-in aliases and all format details.

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AI Skills

VITA includes a library of AI agent skills for specialized tasks. Reference them when prompting your AI assistant:

Category	Skills
Writing	resume-writer, resume-bullet-writer, resume-quantifier
Reviewing	resume-reviewer, resume-ats-optimizer
Targeting	resume-tailor, job-description-analyzer, resume-section-builder
Documents	cover-letter-generator, linkedin-profile-optimizer
Prep	interview-prep-generator, salary-negotiation-prep, offer-comparison-analyzer
Specialized	tech-resume-optimizer, executive-resume-writer, academic-cv-builder
Transitions	career-changer-translator, creative-portfolio-resume

Example usage:

"Use the resume-tailor skill to update sections/experience.tex based on the job description I pasted in job.md."

"Run interview-prep-generator on my CV and generate 5 STAR stories for a Google interview."

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Design Philosophy

• Warn, don't block — duplicate CVs trigger a warning, not a hard stop (--force overrides, locked: true blocks permanently)
• CLI enforces naming — roles are normalized automatically (data engineer → de, machine learning engineer → ml)
• Registry is the truth — .vita/companies.json is the authoritative record; use vita sync if it drifts from git
• User-extensible — role aliases and language codes are fully overridable via .vita/extensions.json
• No cloud — everything is local; your CV data never leaves your machine