gregrandall

<p>AI agents, LLMs, and crawlers have to wade through navigation bars, sidebars, ads, and comment forms to reach the content they want, and every element costs tokens. <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare measured</a> an 80% reduction in token usage when converting a blog post from HTML to Markdown (16,180 tokens down to 3,150).</p>
<p>Botkibble adds a Markdown endpoint to every published post and page.</p>
<p>Cloudflare offers <a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Markdown for Agents</a> at the CDN edge on Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans. Botkibble does the same thing (for free) at the origin, so it works on any host.</p>
<p><a href="https://github.com/greg-randall/botkibble" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub Repository</a></p>
<p><strong>Three ways to request Markdown:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li><strong><code>.md</code> suffix</strong>: append <code>.md</code> to any post or page URL (e.g. <code>example.com/my-post.md</code>)</li>
<li><strong>Query parameter</strong>: add <code>?format=markdown</code> to any post or page URL</li>
<li><strong>Content negotiation</strong>: send <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> in the request header</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>What’s in every response:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Structured metadata header with title, date, categories, tags, word count, character count, and estimated token count (in YAML frontmatter format, readable by any AI agent)</li>
<li>Clean Markdown converted from fully-rendered post HTML (shortcodes run, filters applied)</li>
<li><code>Content-Type: text/markdown</code> and <code>Vary: Accept</code> response headers</li>
<li><code>Content-Signal</code> header for AI signal declaration — defaults to <code>ai-train=no, search=yes, ai-input=yes</code> — see <a href="https://contentsignals.org/" rel="nofollow ugc">contentsignals.org</a></li>
<li><code>X-Markdown-Tokens</code> header with estimated token count</li>
<li>Discovery via <code><link rel="alternate"></code> in the HTML head and <code>Link</code> HTTP header</li>
<li>Automatic cache invalidation when a post is updated or deleted</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Performance:</strong></p>
<p>Botkibble writes Markdown to disk on the first request, then serves it as a static file. A built-in Fast-Path serves cached files during WordPress’s <code>init</code> hook, before the main database query runs. No extra configuration needed.</p>
<p>Add a web server rewrite rule and Botkibble bypasses PHP entirely, serving <code>.md</code> files the same way a server would serve an image or CSS file:</p>
<p>  Method<br />
  Avg. response time</p>
<p>  Standard HTML<br />
  0.97s</p>
<p>  Markdown (cold, first request)<br />
  0.95s</p>
<p>  Markdown (cached, PHP Fast-Path)<br />
  0.87s</p>
<p>  Markdown (Nginx/Apache direct)<br />
  0.11s</p>
<p>Serving directly from disk is <strong>88% faster</strong> than a full WordPress page load. See the Performance section below for Nginx and Apache configuration.</p>
<p><strong>Security:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Drafts, private posts, and password-protected content return <code>403 Forbidden</code></li>
<li>Rate limits cache-miss regenerations (20/min by default) to mitigate DoS abuse</li>
<li><code>X-Robots-Tag: noindex</code> keeps Markdown versions out of search results</li>
<li><code>Link: rel="canonical"</code> points search engines back to the HTML version</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>Cache variants (optional):</strong></p>
<p>You can persist alternate cached representations by adding <code>?botkibble_variant=slim</code> (or any other variant name).<br />
Variant caches are stored under:</p>
<pre><code>/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/<variant>/<slug>.md
</code></pre>
<p><strong>What it does NOT do:</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>Expose drafts, private posts, or password-protected content</li>
<li>Serve non-post/page content types by default</li>
<li>Require any configuration. Activate and it works.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Why Markdown?</h3>
<p>HTML is expensive for AI systems to process. <a href="https://blog.cloudflare.com/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Cloudflare measured</a> an 80% reduction in token usage when converting a blog post from HTML to Markdown (16,180 tokens down to 3,150).</p>
<p>Cloudflare now offers <a href="https://developers.cloudflare.com/fundamentals/reference/markdown-for-agents/" rel="nofollow ugc">Markdown for Agents</a> at the CDN edge via the <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> header, available on Pro, Business, and Enterprise plans.</p>
<p>This plugin does the same thing at the origin, so it works on any host. It also adds <code>.md</code> suffix URLs, <code>?format=markdown</code> query parameters, YAML frontmatter, static file caching, and server-level offloading.</p>
<p>If you use Cloudflare, both share the same <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> header, <code>Content-Signal</code> headers, and <code>X-Markdown-Tokens</code> response headers.</p>
<p>Cloudflare currently defaults to <code>Content-Signal: ai-train=yes, search=yes, ai-input=yes</code> with no way to change it. Botkibble defaults to <code>ai-train=no</code> and lets you override the full signal per site via the <code>botkibble_content_signal</code> filter.</p>
<h3>Performance & Static Offloading</h3>
<p>This plugin supports static file offloading by writing Markdown content to <code>/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/</code>.</p>
<h3>Nginx Configuration</h3>
<p>To bypass PHP entirely and have Nginx serve the files (including variants) directly:</p>
<pre><code># Variants
location ~* ^/(_v/[^/]+/.+)\.md$ {
    default_type text/markdown;
    try_files /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md /index.php?$args;
}

# Default
location ~* ^/(.+)\.md$ {
    default_type text/markdown;
    try_files /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md /index.php?$args;
}
</code></pre>
<h3>Apache (.htaccess)</h3>
<p>Add this to your <code>.htaccess</code> before the WordPress rules:</p>
<pre><code>RewriteEngine On
# Variants
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/$1/$2.md -f
RewriteRule ^_v/([^/]+)/(.+)\.md$ /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/$1/$2.md [L,T=text/markdown]

# Default
RewriteCond %{DOCUMENT_ROOT}/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md -f
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.md$ /wp-content/uploads/botkibble/$1.md [L,T=text/markdown]
</code></pre>
<p>Even without these rules, the plugin uses a “Fast-Path” that serves cached files from PHP before the main database query is executed.</p>
<h3>Credits</h3>
<p>We thank Cristi Constantin (https://github.com/cristi-constantin) for contributing cache variants, URL and SEO improvements, and fixing important bugs.</p>


Botkibble

Serves every published post and page as Markdown for AI agents and crawlers. No configuration, no API keys. Activate and it works.

lastsplash (a11n)

<p>Protect Your Content from AI Scraping</p>
<p>This plugin helps you prevent AI crawlers from using your content as training data for their products. By updating your site’s <code>robots.txt</code>, it blocks common AI crawlers and scrapers, aiming to protect your content from being used in the training of Large Language Models (LLMs).</p>
<h3>Features</h3>
<h3>Blocks AI Crawlers</h3>
<p>Includes:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>OpenAI</strong> – Blocks crawlers used for ChatGPT</li>
<li><strong>Google</strong> – Blocks crawlers used by Google’s Gemini AI products</li>
<li><strong>Facebook / Meta</strong> – Used for Facebook’s AI training</li>
<li><strong>Anthropic AI</strong> – Blocks crawlers used by Anthropic  </li>
<li><strong>Perplexity</strong> – Block crawlers used by Perplexity</li>
<li><strong>Applebot</strong> – Blocks crawlers used by Apple</li>
<li>… and more!</li>
</ul>
<h3>Experimental Meta Tags</h3>
<p>The plugin adds the “noai, noimageai” directive to your site’s meta tags, instructing AI bots not to use your content in their datasets. Please note that these tags are experimental and have not been standardized.</p>
<h3>Custom robots.txt Rules</h3>
<p>Have custom entries for your robots.txt file? You can now add them directly through the plugin!</p>
<h3>Usage</h3>
<p>After activation, the plugin will automatically update your <code>robots.txt</code> and add the necessary meta tags. No further configuration is required, but you can check the settings page for a full list of blocked crawlers.</p>
<h3>Limitations</h3>
<p>While this plugin aims to block specified crawlers, it cannot guarantee complete protection against all forms of scraping, as some bots may disregard <code>robots.txt</code> directives.</p>
<h3>Support</h3>
<p>For questions or support, <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/plugin/block-ai-crawlers/" rel="ugc">please post on the forums</a> or <a href="https://github.com/bobmatyas/wp-block-ai-crawlers/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">on GitHub</a>.</p>


Block AI Crawlers

Tell AI (Artificial Intelligence) companies not to scrape your site for their AI products.

Botkibble vs Block AI Crawlers