Three findings from the 2026-08-19 review (F9, F31, F34):
- F9: every placeholder bullet written as \item [text] let LaTeX parse
the bracketed text as the item's optional label, rendering it clipped
off the left page edge and absent from the PDF text layer ("Achievement"
appeared 9 times in cv/main_example.tex and 0 times in the extraction,
with a clean compile and green CI). Bullets are now braced as
\item {[text]} in the example CV and in the template
06-cover-letter-templates.md teaches, and CI's stock PDF assertions
additionally require "Achievement" to survive pdftotext.
- F31: 05-cv-templates.md gains a "LaTeX Special Characters" section and
06's is completed beyond \_ and \&. The load-bearing case is an
unescaped % in a quantified achievement bullet: it starts a LaTeX
comment and silently deletes the rest of the line from the PDF.
- F34: the documented ATS extraction commands (apply.md,
05-cv-templates.md, CLAUDE.md) now carry -enc UTF-8. Xpdf-based
pdftotext builds default to Latin-1 output, so a correct non-ASCII CV
failed the replacement-character parseability check.
framework_version: 05-cv-templates.md 1.4.1 -> 1.4.2,
06-cover-letter-templates.md 1.0.1 -> 1.0.2. All three pinned by the new
tests/test_latex_guidance.py (9 tests; suite now 261).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Both found by empirically re-running the /apply pipeline end-to-end:
06's Document Structure block still demonstrated itemize wrapped inside
lettercontent - the exact antipattern its own pitfall section forbids -
and following 05's needspace guidance at section level pushed an entire
Education block to a new page, costing a page instead of saving one.
framework_version: 05 -> 1.1.1, 06 -> 1.0.1.
Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
* Add framework_version markers to assistant skills and implement CI version guard and update checker
* Address review feedback: update ci.yml based on latest upstream, gate CI version guard to upstream repo, and remove non-ASCII characters from check_upstream_updates.py
Every PR to this repo is currently verified by hand. This adds the checks
a machine can do:
- latex-smoke: compiles cv/main_example.tex (lualatex) and the new
cover_letters/cover_example.tex (xelatex) in the texlive/texlive
container, failing on any LaTeX error. Exact page-count assertions
(CV=2, cover letter=1) run on the upstream repo only
- lint (tools/lint_skills.py, also runnable locally): every SKILL.md has
parseable YAML frontmatter with name+description (frontmatter breakage
happened before - 37a0eed), allowed-tools 'bun run <path>' targets
exist, command files start with a '# /<name>' title, settings.json is
valid JSON with a permissions.allow list
- cli-typecheck: bun install + tsc --noEmit for all five portal CLIs
(matrix, fail-fast off)
- placeholder-integrity (upstream only): tracked template files still
carry their placeholder tokens, catching accidental personal-data
commits before they land
Fork-friendly by design: /setup personalizes CLAUDE.md, the skill files,
and main_example.tex in forks, so placeholder checks and exact page
counts are guarded with github.repository == upstream; compile success
and lint run everywhere. Live CLI smoke tests are deliberately excluded:
network-flaky, and linkedin-search is personal-use-only per its own ToS
warning - CI-automated requests would violate it. CLIs are typechecked
instead.
The cover letter previously had no tracked example (cover_*.tex is
gitignored), so cover_example.tex is new: a placeholder letter following
the documented 06 structure, demonstrating the correct itemize-outside-
lettercontent pattern. It doubles as the structural reference /apply
Step 2 looks for on fresh clones, which until now matched nothing. The
gitignore exception is ordered after Cover_*.tex because case-insensitive
filesystems match that pattern against cover_example.tex too.
Writing it surfaced a latent bug in the documented template itself:
06-cover-letter-templates.md's structure ends with \closing{Kind
regards,\} - but cover.cls appends its own \, and the doubled break
produces '! LaTeX Error: There's no line here to end.' on every compile
(nonstopmode swallows it, so it went unnoticed). Fixed in 06 and noted
in the example.
Adds a new Step 5 to the /apply workflow that compiles the CV (lualatex)
and cover letter (xelatex) and visually inspects the resulting PDFs before
presenting them to the user. This catches page-break failures that .tex
review cannot detect: orphaned cventry titles, cover letters spilling to
a second page, and bullet fonts not matching body text.
Also introduces relevance-weighted cutting as the rule for shrinking an
overflowing CV: score each candidate line by (a) relevance to the posting,
(b) uniqueness in the document, and (c) load-bearing role in the cover
letter, then cut the lowest-total-score line first, regardless of section.
This replaces the old static "cut oldest section first" heuristic, which
was wrong whenever a relevant older-role bullet competed with an
irrelevant recent-role bullet.
Bundled with the earlier pending token-efficiency improvements to the
/apply workflow (inline draft passing to the reviewer, scoped reviewer
file reads, single end-of-workflow verification pass).
Changes:
- .claude/commands/apply.md: new Step 5 (Compile & Inspect PDFs), renumber
old Step 5 to Step 6, update token-efficiency rules at top to reference
Step 6 for the verification checklist
- .claude/skills/job-application-assistant/05-cv-templates.md: switch
recommended compile engine from pdflatex to lualatex (pdflatex fails on
modern MiKTeX with fontawesome5 font-expansion errors), add
"Compile-and-Inspect Loop" section with needspace/enlargethispage
patterns, add "Relevance-weighted cutting" section
- .claude/skills/job-application-assistant/06-cover-letter-templates.md:
add compile command, add "Compile-and-Inspect Loop", document the
"\lettercontent{} + itemize" pitfall and the required font-matching
Raleway-Medium wrapper fix
- CLAUDE.md: add "Compiled PDF verification (MANDATORY)" checklist items
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
