gitconnected Resume Builder - Your GitHub is Your Resume

I used this during my last job hunt in 2024. It's a free tool that connects to your GitHub and tries to make a resume from your repos and profile. Built by Trey Huffine, the founder of gitconnected and creator of Level Up Coding publication, and honestly, it's better than manually updating my resume every time I touch a new tech stack.

Here's the reality: most resume builders are built for MBA types, not developers. They want you to list "achievements" and "drove synergies across verticals" when what you actually did was fix the memory leak that crashed prod over the weekend. Most developers I know hate traditional resume formats that focus on buzzwords instead of actual code.

Why This Exists (The Problem It Solves)

Your resume is always outdated. I shipped 3 major features and learned Next.js 14, but my resume still says I'm "proficient in React 16."

gitconnected pulls data from your GitHub commits. It looks at your repos, figures out what languages you actually use (not what you claim), and formats it for ATS systems. No more typing "JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js" every damn time.

It actually works without randomly breaking like most developer tools.

How It Actually Works

Connect your GitHub account (the usual OAuth dance) and it pulls:

• Your repos (public ones only, obviously)
• Languages and frameworks from your actual code, not what you think you know
• Project descriptions from your READMEs (if you bothered to write them)
• Contribution activity and commit patterns

The auto-generated descriptions are hit-or-miss. Sometimes it nails it, sometimes it thinks some weekend experiment is your "expertise in containerization." Some repo I can't remember the name of that had 'kafka' in it somehow became my messaging expertise. You'll need to edit the important stuff, but it's faster than starting from scratch.

Who Actually Uses This

Bootcamp grads and junior devs: Good for showing off your portfolio projects when you don't have 5 years of enterprise Java experience yet. Your GitHub activity proves you can actually code.

Senior engineers who hate updating resumes: If you've been at the same company for 3 years and your GitHub shows you're still learning new stuff, this saves time. Better than the 2019 resume that still lists Angular 7 as your "current" skill.

Career changers: Former designers or PMs learning to code can show their GitHub contributions instead of explaining why their marketing background makes them qualified for a React position.

Freelancers and contractors: Client projects live in private repos, but your open source contributions and side projects can fill in the gaps.

One thing the Medium guide mentions is the Portfolio API - you can embed your resume data on your personal site, and it updates automatically when you change your profile. Actually pretty clever if you maintain a developer portfolio.

Bottom line: it digs through your repos, figures out what you actually build (not what you claim), and formats it so both humans and ATS robots can understand what the hell you do for a living.

Here's what happened when I actually used this thing.

GitHub Connection - The Good and The Annoying

You sign up with your GitHub account (obviously), and it starts pulling your public repos. This is where it gets interesting and frustrating at the same time.

What it pulls correctly:

• Languages from your actual commits (finally, a tool that knows I don't actually "know" that random language from a forked repo I never touched)
• Project descriptions from README files (if you bothered writing them)
• Repo names and basic info

What goes wrong:

• It treats your "hello-world-tutorial" repo the same as your production API that handles 10M requests/day
• Weekend experiments get the same weight as projects you've maintained for 2 years
• If your repo name is something like "final-project-cs401" instead of "expense-tracker-react", good luck explaining what it does
• Random test scripts somehow became my QA background

Language detection works well. Figured out I use JavaScript/TypeScript, not the random Python scripts. But it listed "HTML" as a top skill, which is technically true but makes me look like I build websites from 2010.

The Resume It Generates

After connecting GitHub, you get a basic resume that looks like it was made by someone who understands ATS systems but has never actually applied for a developer job.

PDF Export: Clean, boring, ATS-friendly. Uses standard fonts, logical sections. Gets through applicant tracking systems without breaking, which is honestly half the battle. No fancy graphics to confuse the parsing algorithms.

JSON Resume format: Follows the JSON Resume schema, which is cool if you're into that sort of thing. Useful if you want to build your own resume renderer or integrate with other tools.

Web sharing: Gives you a link like gitconnected.com/resume/yourname. Actually looks decent and loads fast. I used this to send to a recruiter who wanted a "quick look" at my background.

The Portfolio API Thing

This is actually clever. It creates an API endpoint with your resume data that updates when you change your profile. I used it on my personal site - just fetch the data and render it however I want.

fetch('https://gitconnected.com/v1/portfolio/yourname')
  .then(res => res.json())
  .then(data => console.log(data))

The portfolio tutorial walks through integrating this. Takes about 30 minutes if you know what you're doing, couple hours if you skip the docs.

Updates happen within a few hours when you change your GitHub or gitconnected profile. Not real-time, but better than manually updating 5 different places when you land a new job.

Making the Robots Happy (So Humans Actually See Your Resume)

ATS systems are terrible at understanding what developers actually do. These robots scan your resume for keywords and toss it if you don't match their algorithm. The resume format is optimized for these shitty robots:

• Standard section headers ("Experience", "Skills", not "My Awesome Journey")
• Clean formatting that doesn't break when parsed
• No graphics, fancy fonts, or creative layouts that confuse ATS systems
• Tech skills listed in a way that keyword matching actually works

It emphasizes projects over job titles, which makes sense for developers. Instead of "Software Engineer II at BigCorp", it highlights "Built real-time chat application serving 50k users using WebSocket and Redis."

Boring but effective resumes. Clean layout, standard fonts, no fancy shit that breaks ATS parsing. Gets through screening robots instead of getting tossed.

Customization - Limited But Sufficient

You can:

• Hide repos you don't want on your resume (goodbye, embarrassing college projects)
• Add custom descriptions for projects when the auto-generated ones suck
• Include work experience that's not reflected in your GitHub activity
• Reorder sections and customize skills lists

You can't:

• Change the overall design (it's locked into one clean, boring template)
• Add fancy graphics or creative layouts
• Completely restructure how information is presented

Can't change the design, which is probably good. Stops you from making one of those "creative" resumes that get auto-rejected.