resume-mcp-server

An MCP server that gives Claude (or any MCP client) structured, searchable access to your resume collection — resumes, cover letters, and application materials in .docx, .pdf, .md, or .txt format.

Job seekers accumulate document sprawl fast: multiple resume versions tailored to different roles, cover letter drafts, reference sheets. Manually digging through them to draft a new application is tedious. Point this server at your resume folder and Claude can answer questions like "which of my resumes highlights Kubernetes experience?", "what achievements have I listed across my backend roles?", or "draft a cover letter drawing from my work at Acme Corp" — without you pasting anything.

The server parses each document into structured data (contact info, work history, education, skills, side projects) and exposes 19 tools covering full-text search, skill lookup, company and role queries, achievement mining, education search, collection analytics, and more. Files are watched and re-indexed automatically, so edits to your documents are reflected immediately.

---

Features

• Multi-format parsing — .docx, .pdf, .md, and .txt documents are parsed into structured data: contact info, work history, education, skills, and side projects.
• Automatic de-duplication — resumes for the same person across multiple files (e.g. a .docx and a .pdf of the same resume) are matched by email or name and collapsed to the richest copy, so search and analytics aren't skewed by duplicates.
• Automatic hot-reload — a filesystem watcher re-indexes your documents as soon as they change, no server restart needed.
• Document type inference — files are automatically classified as resume, cover_letter, application_material, or other based on filename patterns, which can be overridden per category via environment variables.
• Full-text and structured search — search whole documents with search_resumes, or filter any entity type (skills, work experience, achievements, side projects, education) with a scoped query, technology, or competency parameter.
• Three search modes — and, or, and regex matching, available consistently on every tool that accepts a query-like parameter.
• Uniform pagination — every list-style tool returns the same total_count / items / has_more / next_offset / message envelope, with validated limit/offset and a 200-item cap.
• Unified error shape — every failure returns {"error": "..."}, so callers only need to check for one shape regardless of which tool they called.
• Collection analytics — get_collection_stats and get_skill_frequency surface aggregate counts and cross-resume skill popularity.
• Read-only and safe by construction — every tool is annotated readOnlyHint / idempotentHint / openWorldHint: false; nothing mutates your files or reaches outside the local document collection.
• Flexible deployment — run over stdio or HTTP, standalone or via Docker/Docker Compose with CORS support, configured through environment variables or a .env file.

See MCP Tools below for the full list of tools this exposes. For best extraction quality, see the Resume Formatting Guide.

---

Quick Start

Give Claude structured access to your resume collection. The server parses your documents on startup and exposes 19 tools for searching by name, company, skill, education, side project, or full text, plus analytics tools for skill frequency and collection statistics — with automatic hot-reload when files change.

Try it immediately with the included sample resumes:

pip install resume-mcp-server
RESUME_DIR=./sample_resumes resume-mcp-server

Then connect Claude Code:

claude mcp add resume-mcp-server resume-mcp-server -e RESUME_DIR=$(pwd)/sample_resumes

For a persistent setup with Docker or your own documents, see Docker Deploy or Dev Environment.

---

Docker Deploy

The recommended way to run the server. Docker Compose exposes the server over HTTP so any AI client can connect to it.

1. Set your resume directory

Copy the example env file and set your documents path:

cp .env.example .env
# then edit RESUME_DIR_HOST in .env

2. Sync the image version (optional)

Stamp the image with the current pyproject.toml version:

python scripts/sync_version.py

3. Build and start

docker compose build resume-mcp
docker compose up -d

The server is now available at http://localhost:8001/mcp.

4. Connect your AI client

Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "resume-mcp-server": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp"
    }
  }
}

VS Code (.vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "servers": {
    "resume-mcp-server": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Claude Code:

claude mcp add resume-mcp-server --transport http http://localhost:8001/mcp

To add it globally across all projects, add the following to ~/.claude.json instead:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "resume-mcp-server": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8001/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Stopping

docker compose down

Docker (stdio)

Run the image directly — no Compose needed — for MCP clients that use stdio transport (including Glama.ai and Claude Desktop):

docker run -i --rm -v /path/to/your/resumes:/resumes resume-mcp-server

Claude Desktop (~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json on macOS):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "resume-mcp-server": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-v", "/path/to/your/resumes:/resumes", "resume-mcp-server"]
    }
  }
}

---

Dev Environment

For local development or running the server without Docker.

Prerequisites

Python 3.12+

Install

pip install .
# include test dependencies:
pip install ".[dev]"

Run

resume-mcp-server
# with a custom directory:
RESUME_DIR=/path/to/docs resume-mcp-server

Or create a .env file in the directory you run the server from:

# .env
RESUME_DIR=/path/to/docs
FASTMCP_PORT=8001

Then just run resume-mcp-server — the .env is loaded automatically. Variables already set in your shell or by the MCP client always take precedence over .env values.

Connect your AI client (stdio)

Claude Desktop:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "resume-mcp-server": {
      "command": "resume-mcp-server",
      "env": {
        "RESUME_DIR": "/path/to/your/resumes"
      }
    }
  }
}

If resume-mcp-server is not on your PATH, use the full path (e.g. ~/.venv/bin/resume-mcp-server).

Claude Code:

claude mcp add resume-mcp-server resume-mcp-server -e RESUME_DIR=/path/to/your/resumes

uvx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "resume-mcp-server": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["resume-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "RESUME_DIR": "/path/to/your/resumes"
      }
    }
  }
}

---

Configuration

Docker Compose (.env):

Variable	Description
RESUME_DIR_HOST	Path on your machine to the documents directory — mounted to /resumes inside the container
FASTMCP_PORT	Port the HTTP server listens on (default 8001)
LOG_LEVEL	Logging verbosity: DEBUG, INFO, WARNING, ERROR (default INFO)

Local run (environment variables or .env):

Variable	Default	Description
RESUME_DIR	~/resumes	Directory scanned for documents
FASTMCP_TRANSPORT	http (local) / stdio (Docker image)	Transport protocol (http or stdio)
FASTMCP_HOST	0.0.0.0	Bind address
FASTMCP_PORT	8001	Port the HTTP server listens on
DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_RESUME	resume	Regex used to classify a filename as resume
DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_COVER_LETTER	cover.?letter|_cl\.|_cl_|coverletter	Regex used to classify a filename as cover_letter
DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_APPLICATION_MATERIAL	interview|study.?guide|why_|application.?question|job.?desc	Regex used to classify a filename as application_material

A .env file in the working directory is loaded automatically on startup if present. Shell environment variables and values set by the MCP client always take precedence over .env values.

Each DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_* variable replaces the default regex for that category (filenames are matched in order: resume, then cover letter, then application material, then everything else falls back to other). Leave a variable unset to keep its default; an invalid regex is ignored and the default is used instead.

The server scans RESUME_DIR recursively on startup and reloads automatically when files change.

Document type inference

Types are inferred from filenames:

Type	Filename patterns
resume	contains resume
cover_letter	cover letter, _cl., coverletter
application_material	interview, study guide, why_, application question, job desc
other	everything else

Each of the three regexes can be overridden with DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_RESUME, DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_COVER_LETTER, and DOC_TYPE_PATTERN_APPLICATION_MATERIAL — see Configuration.

---

Search behavior

Most tools that accept a query (or technology/competency) parameter split it on whitespace and support three match modes via the optional mode parameter:

mode	Behavior
"and" (default)	All tokens must appear within the same field. "latency throughput" only matches a description that contains both words.
"or"	Any token is sufficient. "latency throughput" matches a description that contains either word.
"regex"	The query is compiled as-is (not tokenized or escaped) into a case-insensitive regular expression and matched against the field. Use this for grep-style power — alternation, wildcards, anchors, etc., e.g. "eng(ineer)?" or `"aws

Multi-field note: For tools that search several fields (company name, position title, achievement text, etc.), AND mode requires all tokens to co-occur in the same field, not spread across fields. Use OR mode when you want a looser cross-field match. Regex mode also matches per-field.

Single-word queries behave identically in and/or mode.

Every tool that accepts a query-like parameter — including search_resumes, the whole-document keyword search — shares this same "and"/"or"/"regex" vocabulary.

search_resumes_by_skill accepts either a single skill string or a list of skills. For a list, mode does double duty: it also controls whether a resume must match EACH skill in the list ("and") or ANY skill ("or"); "regex" mode combines multiple skills with OR semantics.

An empty query or an empty skill list returns {"error": "..."} rather than an empty result — this distinguishes a caller mistake from a legitimate zero-match search.

---

Pagination

All list_* tools (and search_resumes/search_resumes_by_skill) accept limit and offset parameters and return a consistent envelope:

{
  "total_count": 247,
  "items": [...],
  "has_more": true,
  "next_offset": 100,
  "message": "100 of 247 results shown. Call again with offset=100 to see more."
}

total_count is the full match count before slicing. has_more and next_offset tell you directly whether to page further — no need to compute offset + len(items) < total_count yourself — and message restates that in plain language, ready to act on. When there's nothing left, has_more is false, next_offset is null, and message reads "All N results shown.".

limit must be greater than 0 and offset must be 0 or greater — otherwise the tool returns {"error": "..."}. An offset beyond the total result count is not an error; it's a valid "past the end" page (items: [], has_more: false).

Cap and defaults. limit is silently capped at 200 regardless of what's requested — if you ask for more, the response still comes back (not an error), but message is prefixed with "Requested limit N capped to 200." so you know it happened. Default limit varies by tool, generally lower for heavier, deeply-nested responses:

Tool	Default limit
list_resumes	10 (each item is a fully nested resume)
list_work_experiences, list_side_projects, list_education	25
list_achievements	50
list_resume_summaries, list_skills, search_resumes, search_resumes_by_skill	100
get_skill_frequency	20 (not part of the pagination envelope, but shares the same 200 cap)

---

Error handling

Every tool returns a dict. On failure, the dict is exactly {"error": "<message>"} — this is the only failure shape in the API, so a caller can check for the "error" key regardless of which tool it called. This covers: not-found IDs, a resume_id filter that doesn't match any resume, invalid regex patterns, and invalid limit/offset values. A resume_id filter that does match a resume but simply has zero matching child records (e.g. list_work_experiences(resume_id=<valid>) for someone with no work history) is not an error — it returns an empty items list.

get_resume's success shape is {"text": "..."} so that success and failure are both dicts, distinguishable by key.

---

MCP Tools

19 tools are exposed, covering full-text search, skill lookup, company and role queries, achievement mining, education search, collection analytics, and more. Every tool is read-only (readOnlyHint: true) — none mutate state or reach outside the local document collection (openWorldHint: false).

Tool	Description
list_resume_summaries	Lightweight identity records (id, name, email, phone) for orienting before fetching details; optional query filters by name
get_resume_profile	A resume's top-level fields (contact info, statement, education) without nested lists
get_resume_full	A resume's complete nested structure (work experiences, skills, side projects, education) in one call
list_resumes	List all documents, optionally filtered by type
get_resume	Full extracted text of a document, keyed by path (not resume_id)
search_resumes	Full-text search across all documents, sorted by match count
list_skills	List badge skills, optionally scoped to a resume and/or filtered by title
get_badge_skill	A single badge skill by ID
search_resumes_by_skill	Find which resumes list one or more given badge skills (accepts a string or a list)
get_skill_frequency	Badge skills ranked by how many resumes list them
list_work_experiences	List work experiences, optionally scoped to a resume, current-only, and/or a keyword query
get_work_experience	A single work experience entry with its achievement bullets
list_achievements	List achievement bullets, optionally scoped to a resume and/or a keyword query
get_achievement	A single achievement bullet by ID
list_side_projects	List side projects, optionally scoped to a resume and/or matched by keyword or technology
get_side_project	A single side project by ID, including demonstrated technologies
list_education	List education entries, optionally scoped to a resume and/or matched by keyword or competency
get_education	A single education entry by ID, including its competencies
get_collection_stats	Aggregate counts and averages across the entire loaded collection

See docs/TOOLS.md for full parameter tables and return shapes for every tool.