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.