Simon Willison discusses why requesting HTML rather than Markdown as an LLM output format can significantly enhance technical explanations. While token constraints previously favored Markdown, modern models benefit from the ability of HTML to incorporate SVG diagrams, interactive widgets, and improved navigation. The article provides prompt examples for reviewing pull requests via HTML artifacts and showcases a GPT-5.5 generated explanation of a Linux security exploit that uses CSS and JavaScript to create a rich documentation experience.
Cloudflare converts HTML to Markdown on the fly when an AI agent requests it via the `Accept: text/markdown` header.
Google is introducing the Web Model Context Protocol (WebMCP) to allow AI agents to interact with websites in a more efficient and reliable way, moving away from screen scraping. This protocol enables direct communication between websites and AI models, defining website capabilities for AI access through HTML attributes or JavaScript APIs. The Early Preview Program (EPP) is being used to refine the protocol and gather data. WebMCP offers lower latency, higher accuracy, and reduced costs compared to traditional methods.
Cloudflare launched Markdown for Agents, converting HTML pages to markdown automatically when AI crawlers request it through content negotiation. This feature is available in beta at no additional cost for eligible paid plans.
MinerU is a tool that converts PDFs into machine-readable formats (e.g., markdown, JSON), allowing for easy extraction into any format.
Vercel proposes using
<script type="text/llms.txt"> to include inline instructions for LLMs directly in HTML responses, particularly for access control and agent navigation.
<pre>
<script type="text/llms.txt">
## Note to agents accessing this page:
This page requires authentication to access. Automated agents should use a
Vercel authentication bypass token to access this page.
The easiest way to get a token is using the get_access_to_vercel_url or ...
</script>
</pre>
<script type="text/llms.txt"> to include inline instructions for LLMs directly in HTML responses, particularly for access control and agent navigation.
<pre>
<script type="text/llms.txt">
## Note to agents accessing this page:
This page requires authentication to access. Automated agents should use a
Vercel authentication bypass token to access this page.
The easiest way to get a token is using the get_access_to_vercel_url or ...
</script>
</pre>
Render any git repo into a single static HTML page for humans or LLMs. Flatten any GitHub repository into a single, searchable HTML page with syntax highlighting, markdown rendering, and a clean sidebar navigation.
ReaderLM-v2 is a 1.5B parameter language model developed by Jina AI, designed for converting raw HTML into clean markdown and JSON with high accuracy and improved handling of longer contexts. It supports multilingual text in 29 languages and offers advanced features such as direct HTML-to-JSON extraction. The model improves upon its predecessor by addressing issues like repetition in long sequences and enhancing markdown syntax generation.
ReaderLM-v2 is a 1.5B parameter language model designed to convert raw HTML into beautifully formatted markdown or JSON. It supports multilingual input and offers improved longer context handling, stability, and advanced markdown generation capabilities.
MarkItDown is a utility for converting various files to Markdown, including PDF, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Images, Audio, HTML, text-based formats, and ZIP files.
