I can't help but feel there is a funny pattern going on.
A lot of companies want to embrace AI, agents, etc. so they make their platforms easier to use by AI, implementing whatever the latest craze is.
I imagine we're going to see a lot more APIs open up (agentic finances?), a lot of granular access controls, etc.
Where was all of this when regular users had been asking for it for _years_?
Empowering users in general is a good thing, so, in a way, it's a good thing that OpenClaw and things of this nature are exposing all the issues with access controls and API interactions that many of our services have.
Now we just need a reason for AI agents to need "dark mode" on websites...
I don't care about the AI implications but having someone put money into a flawless conversion of html into markdown will certainly improve terminal based web browsing :)
>We already see some of the most popular coding agents today – like Claude Code and OpenCode – send these accept headers with their requests for content.
This seems useful beyond agents.
It will save tons of traffic for scripts, text browsers, low-bandwidth connections,etc
markdown is incredibly compact and easy to parse.
This text/markdown scheme feels like it's begging for adversarial shenanigans since it lets you serve different content to agents than humans, by design.
> it lets you serve different content to agents than humans
You could always do that. The only difference is CloudFlare can now do this on-the-fly, automatically translating HTML to Markdown. My understanding is that you don't have control over the conversion.
It seems hard to tell what to think of a company that is simultaneously trying to poison the content that it sends to agents [1] and also doing things like this.
I understand their arguments for it - and completely disagree - so I can't help but think that anyone who is on the pro-AI side of things would do well to steer clear of them if possible.
I wonder if this will also result in a better "readability" mode for human readers? You could do the Markdown to HTML conversion in the browser.
I can't help but feel there is a funny pattern going on.
A lot of companies want to embrace AI, agents, etc. so they make their platforms easier to use by AI, implementing whatever the latest craze is.
I imagine we're going to see a lot more APIs open up (agentic finances?), a lot of granular access controls, etc.
Where was all of this when regular users had been asking for it for _years_?
Empowering users in general is a good thing, so, in a way, it's a good thing that OpenClaw and things of this nature are exposing all the issues with access controls and API interactions that many of our services have.
Now we just need a reason for AI agents to need "dark mode" on websites...
Markdown isn't so great for ads or for embedded videos.
I still can't stand the idea that people now see their goal as serving agents as well as possible.
They're not even coy about it so let me say it again: they're not working for the people using the agents, their working to serve the agents.
I don't care about the AI implications but having someone put money into a flawless conversion of html into markdown will certainly improve terminal based web browsing :)
So they basically re-invented Gemini (the protocol not the AI model)
>We already see some of the most popular coding agents today – like Claude Code and OpenCode – send these accept headers with their requests for content.
Expect this to be used to block agent traffic
then the agents would request regular html when blocked
This seems useful beyond agents. It will save tons of traffic for scripts, text browsers, low-bandwidth connections,etc markdown is incredibly compact and easy to parse.
This text/markdown scheme feels like it's begging for adversarial shenanigans since it lets you serve different content to agents than humans, by design.
> it lets you serve different content to agents than humans
You could always do that. The only difference is CloudFlare can now do this on-the-fly, automatically translating HTML to Markdown. My understanding is that you don't have control over the conversion.
If you’re willing to serve adversarial Markdown to agents, you’re already willing to cloak HTML.
Seems odd to have it as paid feature (Pro plan or higher) if it will save on delivery costs etc for them.
I am guessing Cloudflares delivery costs would be much lower than the compute costs to convert on the fly.
It's not a paid feature, it's free for pro plans and higher.
that's not how you make money in business
I was going to make some stupid joke in the comments saying that I thought this blog post would be about "Markdown.. on the edge!".
After reading the blog, turns out it is about markdown on the edge. lmao.
RIP FireCrawl
It seems hard to tell what to think of a company that is simultaneously trying to poison the content that it sends to agents [1] and also doing things like this.
I understand their arguments for it - and completely disagree - so I can't help but think that anyone who is on the pro-AI side of things would do well to steer clear of them if possible.
[1]: https://arstechnica.com/ai/2025/03/cloudflare-turns-ai-again...
Title: Introducing Markdown for Agents
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
HN mods, please update the title.