"Markdown fully disabled": Engineer Claude recommends having AI generate HTML directly

According to Beating Monitoring, Thariq, a member of the Claude Code team under Anthropic, said in a post that he has completely stopped using Markdown in his day-to-day work and instead lets AI generate HTML files by default. He believes that as AI-generated plans become increasingly complex, HTML’s advantages in information density and two-way interaction far outweigh those of plain text.

Thariq noted that Markdown longer than 100 lines is extremely hard to read and also forces large models to draw diagrams using garbled ASCII characters. After switching to HTML, not only can it present architecture diagrams and interface designs more intuitively with CSS and SVG, but it can also enable deeper interaction.

The most essential use case is to have the AI build temporary editing interfaces. When he encounters requirements that are difficult to describe in words, he asks Claude to create a temporary webpage with draggable cards or color sliders, along with a “Copy as JSON” button. After tuning the results in the webpage by instinct, he directly copies the parameters back into the command line to feed into the large model, completing the loop.

Although it takes the large model 2 to 4 times longer to write HTML than Markdown, and it’s even more difficult to compare differences (Diff) in version control, he said that this kind of experience—pulling people back into the decision-making cycle—is absolutely worth it.