Discourse has introduced native Markdown endpoints, allowing every topic and list to be served as pure Markdown. This update addresses the inefficiencies of HTML parsing for AI agents and LLMs, which must strip away structural overhead that wastes tokens and risks errors. Unlike the existing .raw output, which contains Discourse-specific syntax like shortcodes that AI tools struggle to interpret, the new Markdown format provides clean, standardized text optimized for both software and human readability.
The feature, originally developed by Ben Word as a plugin and based on his Accept Markdown specification, is now part of Discourse core to ensure all sites can serve content to AI tools by default. Users should disable any third-party “Discourse to Markdown” plugins to use the core functionality. For self-hosted sites, updating Discourse enables the feature; it is already active on hosted sites. Administrators can verify the setup by appending .md to a topic URL or manage it via the enable_markdown_endpoints site setting. Sites behind Cloudflare should note that its own conversion tool might intercept these requests, so comparing outputs with the feature toggled is recommended.
Discourse now serves every topic and topic list as Markdown, so people and AI agents can read your community's answers without the HTML clutter.