/cover-letter

name: cover-letter
description: Generate a tailored, truthful cover letter from the user's resume, profile, and a specific job description. Draft it in the user's voice, ground every claim in the resume (no fabrication), map it to the role, flag it for review, and save a copy. Used by the apply skill when a portal has a cover-letter field, or standalone via /cover-letter <job-url>.

Cover letter

Draft a tailored cover letter for one role. Truthful, specific, concise — never a generic template.

Inputs

• `~/.dear-hiring-manager/resume.*` and `profile.md` — the candidate.
• The job description + company. If given only a URL, open it and extract the JD first (see `apply`).

Procedure

1. Read the resume, profile, and JD. Find a hook: the JD's core problem, a recent company launch/news, or a concrete result you can speak to. 2. Draft the letter (**~300–400 words**, 3–4 short paragraphs; under 250 reads thin, over 500 won't get finished):

• **Open with a specific hook — NOT "I'm excited/passionate to apply."** Tie the first line to company

research / the JD's core problem / a concrete result. Specificity earns the second sentence read.

• **Body**: each paragraph maps one JD requirement to a real, resume-backed story **with numbers**

(2–3 measurable accomplishments, not a skills list). Mirror the JD's own language — "you need X, I did Y" signals a careful read. No claim that isn't in the resume.

• **Close** with a direct call to action — ask for a conversation.

3. **Voice + tone**: match the candidate's register from the resume — professional but distinct, not a corporate template. Role-fit: engineering → substance over polish; sales → lead with results/numbers; creative → a distinct perspective. 4. **Humanize.** Run the draft through the **`humanize`** skill — no em/en-dashes, no parenthetical asides, no AI tells, vary sentence length, sound like the candidate. Plus: no generic skill claims without evidence, no over-explaining gaps or pivots, no ATS-breaking formatting (keep it plain text). 5. **Flag it review-me** and save to `~/.dear-hiring-manager/runs/<company-role-slug>/cover-letter.md`, then deliver it to the form (see below).

Deliver it to the form

• **Textarea / "enter manually"** → fill the field with the letter text.
• **File upload ("Attach")** → write the letter to a real file first

(`~/.dear-hiring-manager/runs/<slug>/cover-letter.txt`, or `.pdf`), stage it into `.playwright-mcp/` (Playwright's sandbox root), upload from there, then delete the staged copy. Accepted types are usually `pdf, doc, docx, txt, rtf`.

Rules

• **Truthful**: every claim traces to the resume/profile — no invented employers, titles, dates, or numbers.
• Tailored to THIS JD/company — if it could be pasted into another application unchanged, it's too generic.
• The human always reviews before Submit; the draft is a flagged starting point.
• Flat-file: the saved copy is human-readable Markdown.