Rendercv

Quick Start

Available themes: classic, harvard, engineeringresumes, engineeringclassic, sb2nov, moderncv Available locales: english, arabic, danish, dutch, french, german, hebrew, hindi, hungarian, indonesian, italian, japanese, korean, mandarin_chinese, norwegian_bokmål, norwegian_nynorsk, persian, portuguese, russian, spanish, turkish, vietnamese

These are starting points — every aspect of the design and locale can be fully customized in the YAML file.

# Install RenderCV
uv tool install "rendercv[full]"

# Create a starter YAML file (you can specify theme and locale)
rendercv new "John Doe"
rendercv new "John Doe" --theme moderncv --locale german

# Render to PDF (also generates Typst, Markdown, HTML, PNG by default)
rendercv render John_Doe_CV.yaml

# Watch mode: auto-re-render whenever the YAML file changes
rendercv render John_Doe_CV.yaml --watch

# Render only PNG (useful for previewing or checking page count)
rendercv render John_Doe_CV.yaml --dont-generate-pdf --dont-generate-html --dont-generate-markdown

# Override fields from the CLI without editing the YAML
rendercv render cv.yaml --cv.name "Jane Doe" --design.theme "moderncv"

YAML Structure

A RenderCV input has four sections. Only cv is required — the others have sensible defaults.

cv:         # Your content: name, contact info, and all sections
design:     # Visual styling: theme, colors, fonts, margins, spacing, layouts
locale:     # Language: month names, phrases, translations
settings:   # Behavior: output paths, bold keywords, current date

Single file vs. separate files: All four sections can live in one YAML file, or each can be a separate file. Separate files are useful for reusing the same design/locale across multiple CVs:

# Single self-contained file (all sections in one file)
rendercv render John_Doe_CV.yaml

# Separate files: CV content + design + locale loaded independently
rendercv render cv.yaml --design design.yaml --locale-catalog locale.yaml --settings settings.yaml

When using separate files, each file contains only its section (e.g., design.yaml has design: as the top-level key). CLI-loaded files override values in the main YAML file.

The YAML maps directly to Pydantic models. The complete type-safe schema is provided below so you can understand every field, its type, and its default value.

Pydantic Schema

The YAML input is validated against these Pydantic models.

Top-Level Model

class RenderCVModel(BaseModelWithoutExtraKeys):
    cv: Cv = pydantic.Field(default_factory=Cv, title='CV', description='The content of the CV.')
    design: Design = pydantic.Field(default_factory=ClassicTheme, title='Design')
    locale: Locale = pydantic.Field(default_factory=EnglishLocale, title='Locale Catalog')
    settings: Settings = pydantic.Field(default_factory=Settings, title='RenderCV Settings', description='The settings of the RenderCV.')

CV Content (cv)

The cv.sections field is a dictionary where keys are section titles (any string you want) and values are lists of entries. Each section contains entries of the same type.

class Cv(BaseModelWithoutExtraKeys):
    name: str | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=['John Doe', 'Jane Smith'])
    headline: str | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=['Software Engineer', 'Data Scientist', 'Product Manager'])
    location: str | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=['New York, NY', 'London, UK', 'Istanbul, Türkiye'])
    email: pydantic.EmailStr | list[pydantic.EmailStr] | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=['john.doe@example.com', ['john.doe.1@example.com', 'john.doe.2@example.com']])
    photo: ExistingPathRelativeToInput | pydantic.HttpUrl | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, union_mode='left_to_right', examples=['photo.jpg', 'images/profile.png', 'https://example.com/photo.jpg'])
    phone: pydantic_phone_numbers.PhoneNumber | list[pydantic_phone_numbers.PhoneNumber] | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=['+1-234-567-8900', ['+1-234-567-8900', '+44 20 1234 5678']])
    website: pydantic.HttpUrl | list[pydantic.HttpUrl] | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=['https://johndoe.com', ['https://johndoe.com', 'https://www.janesmith.dev']])
    social_networks: list[SocialNetwork] | None = pydantic.Field(default=None)
    custom_connections: list[CustomConnection] | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=[[{'placeholder': 'Book a call', 'url': 'https://cal.com/johndoe', 'fontawesome_icon': 'calendar-days'}]])
    sections: dict[str, Section] | None = pydantic.Field(default=None, examples=[{'Experience': '...', 'Education': '...', 'Projects': '...', 'Skills': '...'}])

type SocialNetworkName = Literal['LinkedIn', 'GitHub', 'GitLab', 'IMDB', 'Instagram', 'ORCID', 'Mastodon', 'StackOverflow', 'ResearchGate', 'YouTube', 'Google Scholar', 'Telegram', 'WhatsApp', 'Leetcode', 'X', 'Bluesky', 'Reddit']

available_social_networks = get_args(SocialNetworkName.__value__)

class SocialNetwork(BaseModelWithoutExtraKeys):
    network: SocialNetworkName = pydantic.Field()
    username: str = pydantic.Field(examples=['john_doe', '@johndoe@mastodon.social', '12345/john-doe'])

class CustomConnection(BaseModelWithoutExtraKeys):
    fontawesome_icon: str
    placeholder: str
    url: pydantic.HttpUrl | None

Entry Types

cv.sections is a dictionary: keys are section titles (any string), values are lists of entries. Each section must use a single entry type — you cannot mix different entry types within the same section. The entry type is auto-detected from the fields present in each entry.

Shared fields — these are available on entry types that support dates and complex fields (ExperienceEntry, EducationEntry, NormalEntry, PublicationEntry):

9 entry types:

Example:

cv:
  sections:
    experience:          # list of ExperienceEntry (detected by company + position)
      - company: Google
        position: Engineer
        start_date: 2020-01
        highlights:
          - Did something impactful
    skills:              # list of OneLineEntry (detected by label + details)
      - label: Languages
        details: Python, C++
    about_me:            # list of TextEntry (plain strings)
      - This is a free-form paragraph about me.

Entries also accept arbitrary extra keys (silently ignored during rendering). A typo in a field name will NOT cause an error.

Design (design)