You've probably seen this tweet by @trq212 floating around on Twitter about letting agents write HTML instead of markdown...
Listed below are some of the reasons mentioned in the article:
- Information Density
- Visual Clarity & Ease of Reading
- Ease of Sharing (to me this is the most compelling)
I don't disagree with Tariq, but rather than switch to HTML, I think the answer is to make markdown supported everywhere. We've been using it for years and it's powering much of the modern web. However, if we look at how software and platforms have evolved, markdown support is very dependent on the platform to render it.
Why does markdown work for humans and machines? Well, it's pretty simple, humans write simple syntax that gets rendered into something rich, and unironically, that's often by converting it to HTML and a browser engine rendering it. For machines, it's lightweight to parse and easy to generate token by token without the verbosity of HTML.
We write headers, code blocks, pull quotes, bold text, and what typically happens is something is converting that markdown to HTML.
For example, I am literally typing this blog in markdown, and the only way I can share it to the masses is through a platform like dev.to that converts it to HTML and hosts it for me.
So if the feature is available in some places, why is it not everywhere? I believe that software vendors haven't prioritized adding markdown rendering support, and they should.
We should be able to send a standalone index.md file and view it in all web browsers, chat applications, and emails. Some apps already do this like Discord and Slack (Slack's markdown support disappoints me). We can do this with HTML today, all modern browsers will render something nice, but if you load up markdown in your browser today you will become sad.
We have to reach for things like Obsidian or Kiro to render the markdown, which I feel limits the portability of it all.
Curious what you think and where you see yourself heading in terms of AI agent output. Let me know in the comments if you're switching to HTML or sticking with markdown.
As always, happy coding 🫡!
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