Building a machine-readable resume format for AI agents

Here's something that's been bugging me for a while: traditional resumes are terrible for AI consumption. We've got PDFs, Word docs, and free-form text that AI agents have to parse with NLP, losing structure and meaning along the way. As AI-powered recruiting tools become more common, it struck me that we need a resume format designed specifically for machines to read.

So I built the Agent Resume Standard — an open JSON schema that gives AI recruiters, talent-matching bots, and screening agents exactly what they need: structured, queryable, unambiguous candidate data.

The problem with current resumes

AI agents screening candidates today have to parse unstructured PDF or DOCX text and guess at field boundaries. They infer salary expectations from job titles and location. They guess at remote or onsite preferences from job descriptions. They miss deal-breakers, values, and work style preferences entirely. And they ignore timezone constraints until the interview stage. It's a mess.

What the Agent Resume Standard includes

The schema puts all of this data in a single, validated JSON document with explicit fields for compensation (with currency and negotiability), work preferences (remote, async, meeting tolerance), engagement types, matching criteria (what you want and don't want), and even agent-specific instructions — like telling consuming AI agents to contact you before sharing your info with third parties.

The repo contains both the open specification and my own live resume as the reference implementation. There's a JSON Schema (draft 2020-12) for validation, a full spec document, a field-by-field reference, and an adoption guide for both candidates and platforms.

Who this is for

If you're a candidate, you can copy the template, fill in the required sections, validate against the schema, and host it alongside your regular resume. If you're building an AI recruiting platform, you can fetch and validate against the schema, use match criteria for initial filtering, compensation data for budget matching, and respect the agent instructions section.

I think we're heading toward a world where AI agents do much of the initial screening in hiring. When that happens, having a structured, machine-readable resume format is going to be a significant advantage. Check out the repo on GitHub and let me know what you think.