Show HN: Cover letter generator with Ollama/local LLMs (Open source)

https://github.com/stanleyume/coverlettermaker

14•stanyy•1mo ago

I built an open source web app that generates cover letters using local AI models (Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, etc.) so your resume and job application data never leaves your machine.

No placeholders. No typing. Letters are ready to copy and paste.

The workflow is: 1. Upload your resume (PDF) - it gets parsed and cached in your browser. 2. Paste the job description 3. Get a personalized cover letter in ~5 seconds

It connects to any OpenAI-compatible local LLM endpoint. I use it with Ollama + llama3.2, but it works with any local model server.

Key features: - 100% local and private depending on the LLM of your choice - Smart resume parsing with pdf-parse - Multi-language support (you can add more languages) - Editable output with one-click copy

I made this because I was tired of wasting time with writing letters while applying for jobs. All other tools I tried weren't as quick as I wanted because I still needed to modify the letters to replace placeholders.

I also didn't find any tool that let's me use my local LLM for free, and I didn't want to pay for ChatGPT/Claude API calls for every job application.

The output quality is good, and it can bypass some AI detectors.

It's open source too and free to use. You can self-host it or run it locally in development mode.

GitHub: https://github.com/stanleyume/coverlettermaker

Cheers :)

Comments

saagarjha•1mo ago

I suspect that by using AI to write a cover letter that companies explicitly do not want you using AI for, to the extent that they’re trying to check for AI use, will help you “stand out”-but not in the way you probably want.

BugsJustFindMe•1mo ago

Now you too can send your fully automated AI resume and cover letter to the fully automated AI rejection system the company needed to set up because everyone is flooding them with thousands of automated AI resumes and cover letters that have no friction to generate.

tempest_•1mo ago

For real I basically don't even read cover letters any more and I don't blame the applicants for generating them with LLMs. Unless you are applying for a higher level position a cover letter used to just be a mild heuristic for this person took an extra 10 minutes to alter their standard cover letter and include a different related paragraph. Now its just wasted text.

sam_lowry_•1mo ago

Almost everywhere I applied, and these are dozens of positions over many years, I wrote a concise, sometimes funny, sometimes provocative, sometimes insightful cover letter. If I knew something about the company that HR would find interesting, I would write it. If I knew something about the industry or the founders, I'd mention that as well.

My personal experience is that cover letters do not help at all. At best, it's a test for myself. If I don't want to write a cover letter, I should not apply.

lylejantzi3rd•1mo ago

Welcome to the age of ATS. Nobody reads cover letters or resumes anymore. They read the summaries that the AI inside the ATS generates.

6stringmerc•1mo ago

This was already an article, so in recognition of your genius, go donate to some journalists.

hnkmrininhgbvg•1mo ago

The whole repo is AI slop, get bent.

hnkmrininhgbvg•1mo ago

Submission is AI slop too.

hnkmrininhgbvg•1mo ago

I hate you people so much.

ta9000•1mo ago

Please point out something you have built and open sourced that’s better. We’ll wait.

ryanwhitney•1mo ago

Sad for all involved.

tfirst•1mo ago

If you are submitting an AI cover letter you should be aware that a significant portion of other applicants will be submitting nearly identical cover letters. If a human being is likely to read your cover letter I would write it yourself - even if you think the quality is lower. It looks unique to you, but not to the person reading 30 AI cover letters in a row.

stanyy•1mo ago

I understand what you mean, but these letters are personalised based on what you have in your resume, your unique experience and skills. I would argue that it would be unlikely to end up with the same letter as someone else.

minebreaker•1mo ago

When our team decides to hire a new programmer, each team member always writes a short letter, which tells the applicant why we want to hire them. How well they did in the interview, why they'd be a good fit for our team, etc, etc. I'm not naive enough to believe this is a genuine attempt but a some human engineering of persuasion, but I liked this tradition. At least it has some heart warming vibe.

Until I noticed that my coworkers were using LLMs to write these letters.

I lost hope in humanity.

Eisenstein•1mo ago

This is actually a good thing. Hear me out...

Before LLMs, people had to write these things, and some of them didn't want to. They half-assed it and didn't mean what they wrote, but it was homework and they did it. Reading the letters, it would be tough to separate the sincere from the genuine, because it was done in everyone's typical style.

Now, you see the hallmarks of LLM text construction -- the effusive yet somehow stilted formality with an uncanny valley friendly tone that makes one feel at the same time like they are being sold something and that they are being used as a emotional dumping ground for an person with no self-esteem who needs constant validation.

When you see this, you will know who cares about the process and who does not. You can use that information however you like, but despairing for humanity is probably a bit overblown, IMO.

OptionOfT•1mo ago

> some of them didn't want to

There are many things in life that I don't want to do, but that doesn't mean they aren't important.

I rather get nothing than something LLM generated.

6stringmerc•1mo ago

I'm so glad to read about this!

Why?

Because it adds significant validation to my premise that AI is simply "automation improved" at this juncture and a crutch more than a viable tool in 90% of use cases.

In short, seeing "I made this because I was tired of wasting time with writing letters while applying for jobs" has me dying with laughter because the translation I come up with is "I am so crippled by laziness I'm recalcitrant to do the work to actually get the position to do work" and that's my take-away.

Of course there will be arguments to my perspective and I welcome them. I would like to feature them in my writings on this subject. AI is a shortcut for lazy, otherwise talentless people. I say this as neither.

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Show HN: Cover letter generator with Ollama/local LLMs (Open source)

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