If you've ever tried to use an AI resume builder, you've probably hit the same wall I did.
You sign up, poke around, find the one feature you actually need — and then boom: "Upgrade to Pro for $29/month."
It's frustrating. Resume help shouldn't be locked behind a paywall.
So I built my own.
Meet Persona
Persona is an AI-powered resume builder that you run completely on your own machine. No deployment required. No subscription. No account on some third-party service. You clone the repo, set it up, and it's yours.
It's a fork of the excellent open-source project ResumeLM, but I've added a bunch of features I couldn't find anywhere else — especially around local AI and template variety.
👉 GitHub: github.com/nithiin7/persona (Drop a ⭐ if you find it useful!)
The Big Deal: Run AI Completely Offline with Ollama
This is the feature I'm most proud of.
Most AI resume tools call out to OpenAI or Anthropic and charge you for every request. Persona supports Ollama — which means you can run the AI model locally on your own hardware, with zero API costs and zero data leaving your machine.
Here's how simple it is:
- Install Ollama on your computer
- Pull any model (
ollama pull llama3, for example) - Open Persona's settings, point it to your local Ollama URL
- Done — the AI now runs entirely on your machine
No OpenAI key. No Anthropic key. No usage limits. Your resume data never touches an external server.
If you do want to use cloud models, Persona supports those too — GPT-5, Claude Opus 4.7, Claude Sonnet 4.6, and a handful of open-source models via OpenRouter. But the Ollama path is what makes this genuinely different from everything else out there.
It's 100% Free — Everything Unlocked
The original ResumeLM had Stripe payments baked in. I ripped all of that out.
Every single feature in Persona is available to every user, always. There's no "Pro plan." There's no feature gating. You self-host it, you own it, you use all of it.
10 Resume Templates
Persona ships with ten distinct templates:
- Classic — clean, ATS-safe, traditional
- Modern — contemporary layout with a fresh feel
- Minimal — stripped back, lots of whitespace
- Professional — polished and corporate-ready
- Creative — for designers and non-traditional roles
- Executive — senior-level presence
- Tech — built for software engineers
- Academic — research, publications, academia
- Bold — makes an impression
- Elegant — refined and sophisticated
Each template is fully customizable — you can tweak font size, line height, margins, and spacing at a per-section level right inside the editor.
What the Editor Actually Looks Like
The editor is a three-panel layout:
- Left panel — form-based editor for all your resume sections (work experience, education, skills, projects, certifications)
- Center panel — live PDF preview that updates as you type
- Right panel — AI chat assistant you can talk to directly
You can ask the AI to rewrite a bullet point, suggest better phrasing, tailor your experience for a specific job description, or generate an entire professional summary from scratch. It all happens inline.
There's also a resume score panel that evaluates your resume and gives you actionable feedback, and a cover letter generator baked right in.
Job Tailoring That Actually Works
One of the most useful features: paste in a job description, and Persona will tailor your resume specifically for that role. It reshuffles and rewrites your bullet points to match the language and priorities of the job posting.
ATS systems score resumes based on keyword matching, and most people don't realize their generic resume is getting filtered out before a human ever sees it. Persona helps you fix that.
Export to PDF or Word
When you're done, export your resume as a PDF or a .docx Word file. Both are properly formatted and ready to submit.
Getting Started
git clone https://github.com/nithiin7/persona
cd persona
cp .env.example .env
pnpm install
pnpm dev
Fill in .env with your API keys (or just point it at Ollama and skip the keys entirely). That's it. The app runs locally at localhost:3000.
Full setup instructions are in the README.
Why I Built This
I was job hunting. I wanted an AI tool to help me tailor my resume for each application, but I didn't want to pay $30/month for something that might get deprecated in six months, and I definitely didn't want to upload my personal details to some SaaS I'd never heard of.
So I took an open-source base, added Ollama support, expanded the templates, removed the paywall, and ended up with something I actually use.
If you're in the same boat — job searching, privacy-conscious, or just tired of subscriptions — give it a try.
The Stack (for the curious)
- Next.js 15 (App Router)
- React 19
- TypeScript
- Supabase (local auth + database)
- Vercel AI SDK (model abstraction layer)
- Ollama (local LLM support)
- Tailwind CSS + Shadcn UI
- @react-pdf/renderer (PDF generation)
If you find it useful, a ⭐ on GitHub goes a long way — it helps other people discover it when they're searching for the same thing you were.
Thanks for reading. Happy job hunting.
Top comments (1)
Love the Ollama support. I’ve tried a few resume tools and keeping everything local is a huge plus, especially when personal job data is involved. Nice to see an open-source option without subscriptions or feature locks.