- The editor bar across the top, with the document name, the mode switcher and actions such as History and Download PDF.
- The panel on the left. What it shows depends on the mode you’re in. In Write, a section replaces the outline and an entry replaces its section. Use the back button to return. The assistant and History take the same panel’s place.
- The page canvas on the right. It shows your resume exactly as it will print and updates as you type.
The editor bar
From left to right:
On narrower screens some buttons show only their icon, and History moves into the document menu. See Editing on a phone or tablet.
The document menu
Select the document name to open the document menu.
Document actions stay in the name menu
The four modes
The mode switcher in the middle of the bar changes what the panel shows. The page stays in view in every mode.- Write is for content: your name and contact details, the summary, and every section and entry. See Filling in your details and Managing sections.
- Design is for the look of the page: template, entry headers, fonts, colors, page format and layout. See Choosing a template and Changing how entries look.
- Check reviews the resume for problems, and can compare it with a job posting. See Checking your resume.
- Share publishes the resume as a web page and sets its address and privacy. The page area previews the web page instead of the PDF. See Sharing your resume as a web page.
The editor’s address
Each resume has its own editor page. Its address is your instance’s address followed by/builder/ and the resume’s ID, for example https://rxresu.me/builder/01a0efa5-6529-745e-950a-521ef5b8afc7. Opening that address loads the resume for editing; you must be signed in to your account, and you can only open resumes that belong to you. The ID is the same one the API uses for a resume. See Using the API.
The address can carry extra settings, which the editor reads when the page opens:
Cover letters work the same way and open at
/builder/letter/<cover-letter-id>. See Writing a cover letter.
The page canvas
The page on the right is a live preview of the PDF you’ll download. Each page has a label above it, such as Page 1.- Click a line on the page to edit it. Hovering over the page tints the block under the pointer. Clicking it selects that entry, marks it with an Editing tag, and opens it in the Write panel. On an Experience or Education entry, the tag also offers Swap rows, which puts the position or the company first in every entry. Clicking your name or contact details opens the Basics card. Press Esc to clear the selection.
- Proposed edits from the assistant or from Check appear on the page, with old text struck through and new text highlighted. Nothing changes until you accept them.
- Overflow warning. If your content runs onto an extra page, the label above the first page identifies the planned page that spills, for example “Page 1 runs over by about 6 lines”, and offers Fit to one page. Longer overflow shows the total printed page count. See Fitting content on a page.
Zooming
A small zoom bar floats at the bottom of the canvas.
Fit zooms the page to the available width
- Select − or + to zoom out or in, in 10% steps from 60% to 300%.
- Select the middle button to fit the page to the width of the canvas. It reads Fit when the page is fitted, and the zoom level otherwise. You can also press ⌘ 0 (Ctrl 0 on Windows and Linux).
- Hold Ctrl (⌘ on Mac) and scroll over the page to zoom in or out around the pointer. Scrolling over the panel or the rest of the app works as usual.
- The number on the right is how many pages the resume has.
How your work is saved
Reactive Resume saves as you type. There is no save button. Changes are sent about half a second after you stop typing, and the status under the document name tells you where things stand:
Offline edits stay on this device until syncing resumes
- You can keep editing offline. A notice at the top of the panel explains that changes sync when you’re back online. Share and Download PDF are unavailable until then.
- Unsaved changes survive a reload or a closed tab. If you come back to a resume whose last changes never reached the server, the editor restores them and says “Restored changes that hadn’t been saved yet.”
- Leaving the editor waits for the save. If saving takes more than about 10 seconds, you stay in the editor and see a message that your changes are still open.
- Pressing ⌘ S (Ctrl S) only reminds you that changes are saved automatically.
Editing in more than one place
If the same resume changes somewhere else while you have it open (in another browser tab, on another device, or through an AI agent or app connected to your account), the editor picks up the change on its own and shows a short message: “Synced changes made in another tab.” or “This resume was updated by an AI agent.”- If you’re typing in a field at that moment, the update waits until you leave the field, so your typing isn’t interrupted.
- If you have changes of your own that haven’t been saved yet, saving pauses and the bar says Changed elsewhere · Reload. Your typing stays open. Select Reload, then Keep a copy and reload to keep it as a separate resume named (mine) in Documents before loading the saved version. If you keep typing while the copy is being made, the editor keeps those new edits open too; select Reload again when you’re ready.
- A recovered draft from an older version also pauses instead of overwriting newer saved work.
- After an outside change, ⌘ Z can’t undo past it. Use History to go further back.
Locking a resume
Lock a resume when it’s finished, or when you’ve sent it for an application and want to keep it exactly as it was. You can still view, download, print and duplicate a locked resume, and a public link you already made keeps working, but the content and design can’t change.1
Open the document menu
Select the document name in the editor bar.
2
Select Lock editing
The resume locks straight away and a message offers Undo. A lock icon appears next to the document name.
- The Write panel shows Locked. Unlock to edit. and every field is read-only.
- The Design panel is read-only.
- Rename… and Move to Trash are unavailable in the document menu.
- Share link settings can’t be changed, and History can’t restore an older version over it.

Lock a finished resume to prevent edits
Related guides
- Filling in your details: your name, contact details, photo and summary.
- Formatting text: bold, lists, links and the formatting toolbar.
- Editing on a phone or tablet: how the editor changes on smaller screens.
- Keyboard shortcuts: every shortcut in one list.
- Downloading your resume: PDF, Word, OpenDocument, Markdown and JSON.