career-engine-export

New Application — DOCX Production

This skill governs all DOCX production in the career-engine pipeline. Load it before any DOCX export step. Output files are .docx, opened directly in Word. The user exports to PDF before sending.

career-data data root (R-37). The personal-data files — 01-writing-rules.md, 02-professional-background.md, 03-framework.md, linkedin-profile.md, pipeline-preferences.json, delivered-letters/, and the user's .dotx — load from ${CAREER_DATA}/references/, the path the orchestrator resolves in its career-data discovery preflight. Every other file (self-checks, REFERENCES.md, skill docs, default .dotx templates) stays on ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}. If ${CAREER_DATA} is not set (direct or standalone invocation outside the orchestrator), locate the career-data skill yourself, confirm career-data-marker.json, and apply the orchestrator's healthy / damaged / absent outcomes before reading. A configured user's missing career-data is a hard stop — never silently fall back to blank templates.

The templates own all fonts, sizes, and colors — never hand-set these.

How DOCX production works

cv-writer outputs styled markdown using pandoc's custom-style div and span syntax. The pipeline converts it to .docx at Step 6 using pandoc with the .dotx reference templates. A short post-processing script then updates the role-specific Subtitle in the CV document header.

Templates — fixed-path convention, no config key, never an external OS path (2026-07-04 fix). All templates resolve by fixed filename inside ${CAREER_DATA}/references/templates/ — there is no cv_template or word_templates_path config key anymore, and the plugin never reads a template from outside career-data:

• $CV_TEMPLATE = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/templates/cv.dotx — CV reference template, Detailed CV Type. Contains all custom styles, the user's name and contact info in the document header, and correct formatting throughout.
• $CV_TEMPLATE_BRIEF = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/templates/cv-brief.dotx — CV reference template, Brief CV Type (one-page, two-column). Required only when the resolved CV Type for a role is Brief — see the CV Type resolution step in career-engine-new-application/SKILL.md/career-engine-edit/SKILL.md. Never used for a Detailed-type role.
• $CL_TEMPLATE = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/templates/cover-letter-template.dotx — Cover letter reference template. Contains header and styles. This must resolve from career-data, never from the plugin's own references/ default — the plugin's copy is the new-user default only (see career-engine-setup/SKILL.md), and using it in place of the user's own personalized template was a real production bug (the cover letter export silently ignored the user's actual template every run).
• $CV_TEMPLATE_HE = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/templates/cvHe.dotm — Hebrew CV reference template (note the .dotm extension — this file is macro-enabled, not .dotx).
• $CL_TEMPLATE_HE = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/templates/he-letter.dotx — Hebrew cover letter reference template.
• $CV_FOOTER = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/static-cv-footer.md — the static Education/Languages markdown appended to every English CV before pandoc conversion (see Step 3 below). This must resolve from career-data, never from the plugin's own skills/career-engine-export/ copy — same reasoning as $CL_TEMPLATE above, and a confirmed real production bug, not a theoretical one: convert-cv.sh used to hardcode the plugin's own copy of this file for every CV export, and that plugin-shipped copy had accumulated one real user's actual degree/university content — meaning every installation of this plugin was silently appending someone else's real Education/Languages onto every user's exported CV (fixed 2026-07-09). The plugin's own copy is the new-user blank-{{...}}-placeholder default only (see career-engine-setup/SKILL.md).
• $CV_FOOTER_HE = ${CAREER_DATA}/references/static-cv-footer-he.md — the Hebrew-language equivalent, used only for Hebrew CV export (see the Hebrew production protocol below). Same career-data-only resolution rule as $CV_FOOTER.