Application Documents Template

A Typst template for generating complete job application packages with cover letters, CVs, and supporting documents. Data-driven from YAML, fully customizable styling.

Features

• Data-Driven: All content is separated from layout
• Complete Application Package: Cover page, cover letter, CV (multi-column + sidebar), and certificates cover page
• Flexible Styling: Customize colors, fonts, spacing via YAML settings
• Markdown Support: Write letter bodies with support for Markdown formatting and paragraph spacing
• Multi-language Ready: Translation strings via src/translate.yml

Quick Start

1. Install Typst

See https://typst.app/ for details.

2. Customize Your Data

The template uses a language-based configuration approach:

Configuration Files:

• config.yml: Settings (language, colors, fonts), table of contents, and certificates list
• cv-data.{lang}.yml: Language-specific CV content and personal details (e.g., cv-data.en.yml, cv-data.de.yml)

Edit config.yml with your styling preferences:

• Language setting (controls which CV data file is loaded)
• Theme colors and fonts

Edit the personal: section in your cv-data.{lang}.yml file (e.g., cv-data.en.yml for English, cv-data.de.yml for German) with your contact details, photo, and social profiles. Then add your CV sections: Education, work experience, skills, languages, etc.

To change the language, simply update the lang setting in config.yml and the appropriate language-specific CV file will be loaded automatically.

Important

Your root directory must contain:

• config.yml (required)
• At least one cv-data.{lang}.yml file matching your chosen language (must include a personal: section)

The photo.png and signature.png are optional. If you choose not to include them, remove the corresponding entries from cv-data.{lang}.yml to avoid compilation errors.

Note on file paths: Paths starting with / (e.g., /photo.png, /signature.png) refer to the project's root directory.

3. Write your Cover Letter

Edit cover-letter.md to customize the cover letter for each application. The file uses YAML frontmatter for metadata and Markdown for the letter body:

---
position: Your Target Job Title
date: Today's Date
recipient:
  contact: Hiring Manager Name
  company: Company Name
  street: Street Address
  city: City, Country
---

Dear Sir or Madam,

Letter content here with **bold**, *italic*, and other Markdown formatting.

Best regards,

The YAML frontmatter contains all application-specific information, while the Markdown body supports full formatting. You don't need to edit any .typ files—just this one Markdown file per application!

Of course, you can also just compile the CV without a cover letter.

4. Compile

# Full application package
typst compile --root . layouts/application-documents.typ full-application.pdf

# Just the CV
typst compile --root . layouts/cv.typ cv.pdf

# Just the cover letter
typst compile --root . layouts/cover-letter.typ cover-letter.pdf

# Publications list (requires publications.bib in project root)
typst compile --root . layouts/publications.typ publications.pdf

Tip

If you have justfile installed, you can also use shortcuts for these commands. Simply run just in your terminal to see the available commands.

All targets accept an optional mode argument to switch between compile and watch mode:

just cv            # compile once (default)
just cv watch      # watch mode — recompile on every save
just publications  # compile the publications list

Note

Typst cannot track page numbers automatically. If your content shifts pages, update the toc entries in config.yml with the correct page numbers.

Project Structure

├── README.md                      # This file
├── typst.toml                     # Package metadata
├── config.yml                     # Settings, TOC & certificates (YAML)
├── cv-data.en.yml                 # English CV content + personal data (YAML)
├── cv-data.de.yml                 # German CV content + personal data (YAML)
├── publications.bib                  # BibTeX file for publications (optional)
├── photo.png                      # Your photo (optional)
├── signature.png                  # Your signature (optional)
├── src/
│   ├── application_docs.typ       # Main template functions
│   ├── rendering.typ              # CV section renderers
│   └── translate.yml              # Multi-language strings
└── layouts/
    ├── application-documents.typ  # Full package entry point
    ├── cover-letter.typ           # Letter-only entry point
    ├── cv.typ                     # CV-only entry point
    └── publications.typ           # Publications list entry point

Customization

Colors, Fonts & Language

Edit the settings: block in config.yml:

settings:
  lang:   en                        # Language: 'en', 'de', etc.
  accent: rgb("#435476")            # Primary color (headers, emphasis)
  text:   rgb("#1c1c1c")            # Body text color
  meta:   rgb("#666666")            # Secondary text (dates, labels)
  font:   "Libertinus Serif"
  size:   10pt

Changing the lang setting automatically loads the corresponding cv-data.{lang}.yml file.

Personal Information

Edit the personal: block in your cv-data.{lang}.yml file:

personal:
  first-name: John
  last-name: Doe
  address-street: "Street Address"
  address-city: "City, Country"
  phone: "+1 (555) 000-0000"
  email: john@example.com
  website: https://example.com
  photo: /photo.png
  signature: /signature.png
  titles: [Ph.D.]
  profiles:
    - network: GitHub
      url: https://github.com/johndoe

Table of Contents & Certificates

Configure the cover page table of contents and the certificates list in config.yml:

toc:
  - ["Cover Letter", 2]
  - ["Curriculum Vitae", 3]
  - ["Certificates & Testimonials", 5]

certificates:
  - High School Diploma
  - University Certificates
  - Driver's Licenses

Each toc entry is a [title, page] pair. Update the page numbers manually whenever content shifts pages.

CV Sections

The order of sections in the rendered CV follows the key order in cv-data.{lang}.yml — reorder them there to change their order in the PDF.

Create language-specific CV data files like cv-data.en.yml with these sections:

cv:
  motivation: "Professional summary paragraph"
  core-competencies:
    - title: "Category"
      items:
        - "Competency description"
  education:
    - date: "10/2020 – 06/2024"
      title: "Degree Name"
      institution: "University"
      location: "City"
      description: "Additional notes"
  work-experience:
    - date: "01/2024 – present"
      title: "Job Title"
      employer: "Company"
      location: "City"
      description: "Duties and achievements"
  sidebar:
    languages:
      - name: "Language"
        level: "Proficiency"
    it-skills:
      - category: "Category"
        items:
          - name: "Skill"
            level: "Expert"
    methods:
      - "Method or skill"
  volunteering:
    - label: "Activity Type"
      text: "Description"
  continuing-education:
    - date: 2024
      title: "Course/Certificate"
      description: "Brief description"
  publications:
    - label: "Label"
      title: "Publication Title"
      url: "https://example.com"

For more examples of how to structure the CV sections, see cv-data.en.yml or cv-data.de.yml.

Publications

To include a publications list, add a publications.bib file to your project root and compile layouts/publications.typ:

typst compile --root . layouts/publications.typ publications.pdf
# or
just publications

Publications are automatically grouped into sections by BibTeX entry type:

Section	Entry types
Journal Articles	article
Conference Contributions	inproceedings, proceedings, conference
Technical Reports & Other	techreport, report
Theses	phdthesis, mastersthesis, thesis

Sections with no matching entries are omitted automatically. The author whose family name matches personal.last-name in your CV data is highlighted in bold.

Skipping CV Sections

Prefix any key in cv-data.{lang}.yml with _ to hide that section without deleting it:

cv:
  _volunteering:   # hidden — will not appear in the rendered CV
    - label: "..."
  education:
    - ...

Adding More Languages

To support additional languages:

1. Create a new language-specific CV data file: cv-data.{lang}.yml (e.g., cv-data.fr.yml for French)
2. Update the lang setting in config.yml to your desired language code
3. Ensure src/translate.yml contains translations for your language

When you compile with the updated language setting, the template will automatically load the corresponding CV data file.

Tips

• The best way to keep your personal CV data private: use this repository as a submodule in a private repository. Create all your personal YAML, BibTeX and PNG files in the root of the private repository and compile from there. Note that you need to point to the layouts in the submodule.

• Alternatively, keep config.yml, photo.png, signature.png, and your cv-data.{lang}.yml files private (add to .gitignore)

• Use your main branch or a dedicated full-cv branch to populate your CV over time

• For different job applications, use separate branches

  Example: Branching workflow

  For job applications, create a branch per application:

  git checkout -b application/company-name
  # Edit your cv-data.{lang}.yml file
  typst compile --root . layouts/application-documents.typ "Application_CompanyName.pdf"
  git add -A && git commit -m "Application: Company Name"
  git tag application/company-name

  This keeps the main branch clean while maintaining a history of all applications. (In the git log you will also have the creation dates of your applications.)

Requirements

• Typst ≥ 0.14.2
• @preview/fontawesome:0.6.0 (automatically downloaded)
• @preview/pergamon:0.8.0 (automatically downloaded, used for publications)
• @preview/citegeist:0.2.2 (automatically downloaded, used for publications)

License

MIT

Credits

Built with Typst and FontAwesome.
Thanks to rajgeophysik for inspiration on design and layout.