Resume x-ray
Type your bullet points and watch what an ATS keyword screener actually reads — not your prose, just the required and nice-to-have keywords it can literally match. Pick a target role, edit the text, and see a live machine-match score with every missing keyword flagged. The reveal: a bullet a human reads as impressive can score near-zero against the matching machinery underneath — the gap between sounds good and gets surfaced. Runs entirely in your browser (0 uploads, works offline).
How to use it
- Pick a target role — that loads the required (must-have) and nice-to-have keywords a screener checks for.
- Edit or paste your own resume / profile bullets into the box; the match score updates on every keystroke.
- Read the two keyword columns — green landed, red is invisible to the machine — and the what the screener reads strip below.
- Rewrite the weak lines to name the real skills in the words the role screens for, and watch the score climb.
What this clears up (the fundamentals)
- A screener reads keywords, not sentences — the first pass is machine matching. Beautiful prose with none of the target terms scores near-zero, no matter how a human would react to it.
- Required beats nice-to-have — must-have keywords are weighted twice as heavily here, mirroring how a screen gates on them first. Miss a required term and the score drops hard.
- Word boundaries matter — "java" does not match inside "javascript." The machine looks for the exact term, so name the skill explicitly instead of hoping it is implied.
- The fix is not buzzword-stuffing — it is naming the real, verifiable skills the role actually screens for, in the words both the machine and the human after it are scanning for.
Where it's used
A career reliability check — the fastest way to feel why "my best bullet point scored lowest on the actual screen" happens, and why the resume a human loves can still get filtered out. It's a miatz build-lab concept playable; learn to build it yourself.
FAQ
What is an ATS keyword screen?
An Applicant Tracking System (or AI pre-screen) matches your resume against the keywords a role requires before a human ever reads it. This playground simulates that first pass: it looks for target keywords on word boundaries and scores the weighted match.
Why did my strongest bullet score low?
Because the screener reads terms, not impressiveness. A line like "drove a step-change in outcomes" carries no matchable skill keywords, so it scores near-zero — even though a person might love it. Name the concrete skill and the tool used.
How do I raise the score honestly?
Add the real, verifiable skills the role screens for, using the exact words in the requirement (e.g. "SQL", "user research", not just "worked with data"). Never invent skills you don't have — this shows you which true skills you left unnamed.
Is anything uploaded?
No. Your resume text and every keyword match are processed entirely in your browser — nothing is transmitted or stored. Turn off your Wi-Fi and it still works.
Limits
A teaching model with per-role keyword lists and exact word-boundary matching — a real ATS may also weigh synonyms, sections, dates, and formatting. The mechanism (the machine matches keywords, so name the real skills explicitly) is exactly the real practice.
Related
Part of the Demystify Playgrounds. Explore the rest from the Playgrounds home.
Bookmark this page (Ctrl+D, or ⌘D on Mac) — it works offline the next time you need it.