How to write a cover letter without making an account

A cover letter is four or five paragraphs. It is a strange thing to put behind a registration form, and the reason it usually sits behind one is that the letter is a lead, not a product. The cover letter builder here has no registration, so this page can be a straight walk through the four steps.

The screens below were taken in a browser that had never opened this site and never created anything, for an invented candidate applying to an invented company.

Step one: start with your résumé

The builder offers two ways in: write a letter from a blank page, or start with your résumé. Starting with the résumé is the one that makes the rest of this page work, because the résumé is what the letter is allowed to claim. Upload the file, or paste the text, and the review screen shows what was read before anything else happens: the roles, the degree, the skills, each one editable or removable. An uploaded file is read in the browser first, which is the route described on writing a letter from a PDF you already have.

The design is a separate choice and not a final one. 12 whole letters are in the letter designs gallery, and Change design switches between them at any point without touching the words. The reasoning for showing entire letters is in why a letter gallery shows whole letters.

Step two: the job

Details & drafting asks for the role, the company and the job description, with the recipient's name, title and city as optional extras. The posting is what the draft is built against, because a letter that answers no particular advert is a template. Once it is pasted, the builder tells you how many requirements it recognised in it.

There is no field asking why you want the job, and that is deliberate: the builder never invents a reason for wanting a role. If you have one, add it in your own words to the Opening paragraph once the draft exists.

Step three: the letter, with its sources one click away

Create new draft writes the letter as blocks: greeting, opening, experience, relevant skills, closing and sign-off, each with its own word count and each editable. Open Details on a block and every sentence in it is listed with its source, "traced to your evidence · line 9", or marked as a connective that asserts nothing. That label is the product of a rule rather than a flourish: the engine selects sentences and carries the index of the source, so a claim in the letter can always be walked back to a line of your résumé.

If the posting asks for something your résumé cannot show, the draft says so once, in a plain sentence, as something you have not used in these roles. It never claims it.

Step four: review and download

Review & download shows the whole letter beside a Before you send checklist: the recipient and role it is addressed to, the signature, and the length in words. Nothing on it blocks the download. It asks you to read the final letter and check the names, facts and contact details yourself, and a letter with no name on it shows that on the Signature row, which is the subject of the unsigned-letter rule.

Then Print / Save PDF or Download DOCX, both free, in any design, with no watermark. Save version keeps a copy in this browser, up to 12 of them, so a draft you liked yesterday is still there.

What it will not do

It will not invent a project, a skill or a reason. It will not claim a requirement your résumé does not show. It does not use a language model, so nothing in the letter is a plausible sentence from somewhere else. Where the evidence is thin it produces a shorter letter, which is a better outcome than a longer one that is not true. If you want the structural advice rather than the mechanics, the writing guide and the structure guide cover the paragraphs themselves.

Why the posting is required

A letter that could be sent to any employer is a letter that says nothing, and it is obvious to the reader within two sentences. Requiring the posting is how this tool refuses to produce one. The advert is read for the requirements it states, and the letter is built against those, with anything your résumé cannot support named plainly rather than claimed.

That sentence is the most useful side effect of the whole process: a short, specific note of where you are weaker than the advert asks, written before anyone has interviewed you. The article on unsupported requirements makes the case for reading it as preparation rather than as bad news.