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Build a Local AI Resume Builder with Ollama

Job to be done: Build a local, free AI-powered resume builder

🇳🇬 Ways to use this in Nigeria

Ideas to get you started, adapt to your situation.

  • Student

    Build a free, offline AI resume builder on your laptop to create CVs for internships or NYSC applications.

  • 9-5 employee

    Generate multiple CV versions for job applications using a private, local AI without paying for online services.

  • Entrepreneur

    Create professional resumes for co-founders or early hires using a free, offline AI tool on your own machine.

What you’ll get

Your own AI resume builder running entirely on your computer, free, private, and working offline once it is set up. Persona (a ready-made resume app) does the AI writing through Ollama (software that runs AI models locally), so nothing goes to the cloud and there are no subscriptions. This is an intermediate workflow: you will use a terminal and run a small project, but you do not need to write any code.

Tools you need

  • Ollama (free): runs AI models directly on your machine, no internet or account needed after the model downloads.
  • Persona (free): the open-source resume-builder app you will run. It is a streamlined fork of ResumeLM.
  • Git (free): used to download the Persona project. (“Cloning” just means copying the project to your computer.)
  • A code editor (free): such as VS Code, handy for editing Persona’s settings.

Steps

  1. Install Ollama: download it from ollama.com and run the installer (Windows, macOS, or Linux). This is what runs the AI locally.

  2. Download an AI model: in your terminal, pull a model so Ollama has a brain to use:

    ollama pull llama3

    You should see a download bar, then a success message.

  3. Download the Persona project: clone it with Git:

    git clone https://github.com/nithiin7/persona.git

    You should see a new persona folder appear.

  4. Open the project folder: move into it in your terminal:

    cd persona

  5. Install its dependencies: follow the project’s README to install what it needs. For a web project like this it is usually one command (for example npm install); the README has the exact one. You should see packages download without errors.

  6. Point Persona at your local Ollama: open Persona’s settings and set the AI address to your local Ollama, which runs at:

    http://localhost:11434

    (“localhost” means your own computer; 11434 is the door Ollama listens on.)

  7. Run Persona: start the app following the README (often npm run dev), then open the address it prints in your browser. The AI resume features now run on your machine, for free and offline.

Original source

Based on a DEV Community post by nithiin7, who built Persona as a fork of ResumeLM so that AI resume building can run fully offline with Ollama, removing subscription costs and keeping your data private.

Notes & variations

  • Cloud models: Persona can also use cloud models like GPT or Claude through OpenRouter if you prefer, but that costs money and needs an API key. The whole point here is to avoid that.
  • Model choice: you can try other local models (for example ollama pull mistral) and point Persona at them. Bigger models give better writing but need more computer memory.
  • Common pitfall: starting Persona before Ollama is running, or before the model finished downloading. Make sure ollama pull completed first.

Keep going

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