Profile in Postgres
Your CV lives as structured data in Neon — education, experience, projects, skills. One source of truth.
Typst skill in Claude Code
The skill writes the
.typ template, runs the CLI, returns a pixel-perfect PDF. You don’t write any Typst by hand.Tailored cover letters
Paste a JD, click Generate. Claude writes in your voice, citing only real items from your profile.
Learning objectives
By the end of this session, you should be able to:- Invoke the Typst skill through Claude Code to turn structured profile data in Neon into a pixel-perfect, downloadable PDF — without writing a single line of Typst by hand.
- Unify one data source (Neon
profile) across two outputs — the portfolio site and the CV / cover letter PDFs — proving that data first, documents later is a senior engineering habit. - Ship one-click “Download CV” and “Generate cover letter for [job description]” buttons on your live portfolio that produce custom PDFs on demand.
Core topics
- Typst, in one paragraph: think “Markdown with superpowers that compiles to PDF”. Same tool this lecture handout is compiled with.
- Skills in Claude Code — the Typst skill is shipped by Anthropic and knows how to generate common documents from structured input.
- Data-driven documents: why storing your CV fields in Neon (not Google Docs) makes the CV AI-editable forever.
- Cover letters are the perfect LLM task: structured input (your profile + a job description) + structured output (a formatted PDF).
- The meta moment: this lecture and your CV are both made with the same tool.
Tools introduced this week
| Tool | Role this week |
|---|---|
| Typst CLI | Compiles .typ files to PDFs — fast and deterministic |
| Typst skill (Claude Code) | AI writes the .typ template and drives the compile |
| Neon Postgres + Drizzle | Stores your profile row: one source of truth |
| Claude API (optional) | Generates tailored cover-letter prose from a JD |
| Vercel serverless function | Runs Typst compilation on demand and streams PDF |
Prerequisites: Complete Week 7 — Real-Time Slack Notifications first. You need the auth, database, and rate-limit patterns from Weeks 4 and 7 in place.
Download Week 8 PDF
Full lecture · 676 KB — Session plan, hands-on lab steps, Typst-on-Vercel deployment patterns.
Continue to the Capstone
Weeks 9–12: team project