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Markdown Versions of Your Articles

Every article in your knowledge base can be served as clean Markdown, so AI assistants and coding agents read your docs without the page around them.

Rebecca Thompson
Updated by Rebecca Thompson

AI assistants and coding agents read your docs too. When they load an article as a normal web page, they have to dig your content out of the navigation, scripts and styling around it. That's slow and messy. Markdown versions give them a format they already understand.

Just add .md to the end of any article URL to get that article as Markdown:

https://yourdomain.helpdocs.io/article/abc123-getting-started.md
Open any published article. Add .md to the end of the URL in your address bar and press Enter 🎉

You don't need to set anything up per article. Every article gets a Markdown version, and it updates whenever you publish a change.

How do AI tools find .md files? 👀

Most agents won't know to add .md themselves, so HelpDocs points them to it in three ways:

  • Content negotiation. Tools like Claude Code tell the server they prefer Markdown. When they do, they get Markdown from your normal article URL. Browsers still get the regular page.
  • llms.txt. If you've enabled llms.txt, its article links point to the Markdown versions.
  • Alternate links. Every article page includes a link to its Markdown version that tools can discover.

How to Enable Markdown Articles

Screenshot of card for markdown version
  1. Head to Settings > AI
  2. Scroll to AI Visibility
  3. Click Markdown articles card
  4. Hit Save

What's In The Markdown

Each file starts with a short header holding the article's title, description and link, followed by the article itself. Clips and variables are filled in, so the Markdown matches what a reader sees on the page. The table of contents is left out, since tools build their own from your headings.

Here's a quick look at the top of a file:

Title: Getting Started
          Description: Everything you need to set up your Knowledge Base.
          Link: https://yourdomain.helpdocs.io/article/abc123-getting-started
          
          Welcome to your new Knowledge Base. This guide walks you through the basics.

Who Can See It

The Markdown version plays by exactly the same rules as the article page. If a visitor can't see an article, they can't see its Markdown either.

  • Draft and archived articles aren't available.
  • Articles restricted to permission groups are only served to people in those groups.
  • Team passwords, IP allowlists and logged-in-only Knowledge Bases all still apply.
Requests for the Markdown version still show up in your analytics. That means visits from AI tools and agents are counted just like any other article view.

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