> I’ve started preferring HTML as an output format instead of Markdown and increasingly see this being used by others on the Claude Code team, this is why.
This is why I read long agent output either by using VIM and MacOS Quicklook (with a markdown extension for rendering) or paste output into MarkEdit (an editor with a preview pane; I think it’s cross platform?). Worst case, have an agent build you a simple local web page that interprets Markdown and renders it. Markdown was invented as a shorthand for web syntax[0]. That’s what it’s for! I bet you spend more tokens and time asking an agent to convert its native markdown to html than any of these.
This is why I read long agent output either by using VIM and MacOS Quicklook (with a markdown extension for rendering) or paste output into MarkEdit (an editor with a preview pane; I think it’s cross platform?). Worst case, have an agent build you a simple local web page that interprets Markdown and renders it. Markdown was invented as a shorthand for web syntax[0]. That’s what it’s for! I bet you spend more tokens and time asking an agent to convert its native markdown to html than any of these.
0. https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/