Write in Markdown, serve it dynamic
6 hours ago
- Three types of visitors (humans, indexers, AI agents) have different needs but all access the same URL.
- Content negotiation via the HTTP Accept header allows serving the same content in different formats: rich HTML for humans, static HTML for indexers, raw Markdown for AIs.
- Serving Markdown to AIs reduces token costs by 76–99%, improving AI comprehension and citation likelihood.
- This approach is not cloaking because the content is identical; only the presentation format changes at the client's request.
- A dynamic backend keeps Markdown as the single source of truth, unlike static generators that discard Markdown after building HTML and require separate duplication for AI formats.
- The author advocates writing in Markdown but serving it dynamically to adapt to each visitor without maintaining multiple copies.