Building a Config-Driven Resume Template Engine in React

When I started building a resume builder, I did what most developers do: I created one React component per template. TemplateModern.tsx , TemplateClassic.tsx , TemplateMinimal.tsx . Each one was a slightly tweaked copy of the last. By template five, the pattern was already painful. A bug fix in the header meant five identical changes. A new section type meant touching every component. Worse, adding a new template required duplicating hundreds of lines of JSX just to change some colors and a font. There had to be a better way. The Core Insight: Templates Are Data, Not Code Most resume templates are not structurally different. They share the same sections — header, experience, education, skills. What varies is how those sections are rendered : column layout, font choices, color palette, the way section headers look, how skills are displayed. That variation is configuration, not logic. So I stopped writing components and started writing config objects. The TemplateConfig Interface Every t