Something interesting happened in AI dev circles this month. On May 8, Thariq Shihipar on the Claude Code team at Anthropic shared that he's moved away from writing markdown files for most of his work and started using HTML instead. His reasoning: when AI generates the content, the things markdown is optimized for (easy to type, easy to edit by hand) matter less. HTML can offer richer layouts, interactivity, and visual hierarchy. He shared a companion site with 9 examples where he thinks HTML works better dashboards, code reviews, SVG diagrams, presentations, collapsible explainers. A few days later, Andrej Karpathy joined the conversation. He framed it as part of a longer evolution raw text to markdown to HTML to something more interactive down the line and suggested adding "structure your response as HTML" to prompts. Not everyone agreed. Developer Kurtis Redux published a response arguing markdown still wins on readability, code review, and ecosystem compatibility. Both sides make fair points. The conversation is still unfolding. Curious where you land on this do you prefer markdown or HTML when working with AI tools? And has this changed how you're prompting? 👇 . Follow @‌thedevlife for more content like this . . . . . #thedevlife AI ClaudeCode Anthropic Karpathy LLM WebDev DeveloperTools SoftwareEngineering TechNews AIagents

Summary

Thariq Shihipar advocates for using HTML over markdown for AI-generated content, citing benefits in layout and interactivity. The discussion includes contrasting views from Andrej Karpathy and Kurtis Redux, highlighting an ongoing debate in developer circles.

Key Points

1. Thariq Shihipar shifted from markdown to HTML for AI-generated content.
2. HTML provides richer layouts and interactivity compared to markdown.
3. He shared examples where HTML outperforms markdown in various applications.
4. Andrej Karpathy sees this as an evolution towards more interactive formats.
5. Kurtis Redux argues markdown is superior for readability and compatibility.
6. The debate between markdown and HTML continues among developers.

Tags

Repurpose Ideas

• LinkedIn post: Share your preference: HTML or Markdown?
• Tweet: Discuss the pros and cons of HTML vs Markdown.
• Checklist: Evaluate your current AI prompts for structure.