gregrandall

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).
Botkibble adds a Markdown endpoint to every published post and page.
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.
<a href="https://github.com/greg-randall/botkibble" rel="nofollow ugc">GitHub Repository</a>
Three ways to request Markdown:
<ul>
<li><code>.md</code> suffix: append <code>.md</code> to any post or page URL (e.g. <code>example.com/my-post.md</code>)</li>
<li>Query parameter: add <code>?format=markdown</code> to any post or page URL</li>
<li>Content negotiation: send <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> in the request header</li>
</ul>
What’s in every response:
<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>
Performance:
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.
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:
 Method 
 Avg. response time
 Standard HTML 
 0.97s
 Markdown (cold, first request) 
 0.95s
 Markdown (cached, PHP Fast-Path) 
 0.87s
 Markdown (Nginx/Apache direct) 
 0.11s
Serving directly from disk is 88% faster than a full WordPress page load. See the Performance section below for Nginx and Apache configuration.
Security:
<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>
Cache variants (optional):
You can persist alternate cached representations by adding <code>?botkibble_variant=slim</code> (or any other variant name). 
Variant caches are stored under:
<pre><code>/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/_v/<variant>/<slug>.md
</code></pre>
What it does NOT do:
<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>
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
<h3>Performance & Static Offloading</h3>
This plugin supports static file offloading by writing Markdown content to <code>/wp-content/uploads/botkibble/</code>.
<h3>Nginx Configuration</h3>
To bypass PHP entirely and have Nginx serve the files (including variants) directly:
<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>
Add this to your <code>.htaccess</code> before the WordPress rules:
<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>
Even without these rules, the plugin uses a “Fast-Path” that serves cached files from PHP before the main database query is executed.
<h3>Credits</h3>
We thank Cristi Constantin (https://github.com/cristi-constantin) for contributing cache variants, URL and SEO improvements, and fixing important bugs.

Botkibble

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

Log Hero

<h4>Log-Hero.com</h4>
Do you want to understand how bots crawl your website? Log Hero helps you track and visualize bots, spiders, and crawlers by making them visible in real time in your Google Analytics account so that you can analyze them like human visitors.
His additional dimensions and metrics help you analyze the bot data even better. Using Log Hero, you won’t have to fetch your server logs and analyze them in a lousy UI. From now on, your logs are available in real-time in Google Analytics.
<h4>Data that you can monitor in Google Analytics</h4>
<ul>
<li>Page path of your crawled sites (see how often a bot crawls sites).</li>
<li>User agent (how the bot identifies himself).</li>
<li>IP addresses (only for bots, so 100% GDPR and privacy compliant).</li>
<li>Sessions and users (monitor bots and their flow as if they were human visitors).</li>
<li>HTTP status codes (monitor status codes of individual sites, find broken links, redirect chains, server failures).</li>
<li>Download times (how long the bot needs to download your content).</li>
<li>[Premium] Device category (which device category the bot used. I.e., see whether Google crawled you with the mobile or desktop bot).</li>
<li>[Premium] Bot name (Using user agent and the IP address, we check whether the bot is whom he claims he is).</li>
<li>[Premium] Request method (see what request method (PUT or GET) bots used on your site).</li>
<li>[Premium] Referral / channel (analyze through which links bots came to your site to crawl you).</li>
<li>[Premium] Location (see where the visitor or bot is from).</li>
<li>[Premium] IsBot (see at a first glance whether it’s a bot or a human).</li>
<li>[Premium] Spam detection (check how many spam bots visit your site and what type they are).</li>
<li>[Premium] Attack detection (get a warning if someone tries to attack or hack your site).</li>
</ul>
<blockquote>
Note: some of those features are premium features. They are only available in paid plans. You can <a href="https://log-hero.com" rel="nofollow ugc">get them here</a>!
</blockquote>
<h4>Analysis in Google Analytics</h4>
All data is safely stored in your Google Analytics account and available even if you won’t continue using Log Hero.
<ul>
<li>Easy filtering of your data in Google Analytics (works with regular expressions, too).</li>
<li>Advanced and fast segment analysis.</li>
<li>Real-time monitoring of your data.</li>
<li>Easy exporting of your data as Excel, CSV, or Google Sheets.</li>
<li>Analysis of large data sets through Google Analytics’ API.</li>
<li>Easy setup of dashboards and alerts.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Monitoring critical technical issues</h4>
Log Hero helps you to identify many issues concerning technical optimization of your site and can derive quick action items to resolve these.
<ul>
<li>Which bots crawl my site and how often?</li>
<li>Which orphan pages has my site that are never crawled?</li>
<li>Which status codes does my site return to search engines?</li>
<li>Are my robots.txt and sitemap.xml crawled by search engine bots?</li>
<li>Do search engine bots crawl my page with a desktop or mobile device?</li>
<li>How long does the bot need to download the resources of my site?</li>
<li>How many users does my normal Google Analytics system not track because they have disabled the tracker or Javascript?</li>
<li>and much more. Visit <a href="https://log-hero.com" rel="nofollow ugc">log-hero.com</a>! for more information</li>
</ul>
<h3>Bug reports</h3>
Bug reports for Log Hero are <a href="https://github.com/LogHero/lh-wp-plugin/issues" rel="nofollow ugc">appreciated on GitHub</a>. Please note that GitHub is not a support forum, and issues that aren’t adequately qualified as bugs are closed.
<h3>Further Reading</h3>
For more information about logs or this plugin, visit the <a href="https://log-hero.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Log-Hero</a> homepage.

Log-Hero.com Plugin

Cool stuff I can exactly see my Logs in Analytics and check if the Googlebot is crawling my page correct.

Funny: Interesting how many Attacks on my Page I can see

Logs in GA - Yeah

Analyze how search engines and other bots crawl and understand your web page. The official PHP Wordpress plugin for log-hero.com.

Botkibble vs Log-Hero.com Plugin