chancerylaneproject

Markdown for Agents and Statistics converts your WordPress content to Markdown and serves it 
to AI agents and language model tools that request it via HTTP content negotiation 
(<code>Accept: text/markdown</code>).
The Chancery Lane Project is a charity that helps organisations reduce emissions using the power of legal documents and processes. We’ve published this plugin as we believe that making content more legible for AI Agents makes a meaningful difference to their energy usage – not only by reducing the amount of tokens required (by up to 90% over HTML) to consume the content, but also minimising the server resources required to render, process and display pages at source.
How it works:
<ol>
<li>Posts and taxonomy archive pages are converted to Markdown and saved as static 
files on disk inside <code>wp-content/uploads/</code>.</li>
<li>When a visitor (or AI agent) requests a page with <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> in 
the HTTP headers, WordPress serves the pre-generated <code>.md</code> file directly — 
no page render required.</li>
<li>A <code><link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"></code> tag is added to each page’s 
 so agents can discover Markdown versions automatically.</li>
</ol>
Features:
<ul>
<li>Content negotiation (<code>Accept: text/markdown</code>, <code>?output_format=md</code>, or known AI User-Agents)</li>
<li>Taxonomy archive support — category, tag, and custom taxonomy term pages served as Markdown post listings</li>
<li>Automatic Markdown generation on post save; taxonomy archives auto-update when any post in the term changes</li>
<li>AJAX bulk generation with live progress counter — no page timeouts on large sites</li>
<li>Per-post-type field configuration — choose which meta/ACF fields go in frontmatter or body</li>
<li>ACF support with dot notation for nested group fields (e.g. <code>group.subfield</code>)</li>
<li>Content fields option — use ACF fields as the body content instead of post_content</li>
<li>Manifest generation with content hashes and change tracking per post type</li>
<li>Incremental export — only re-export changed documents (<code>--incremental</code>)</li>
<li>Delta file (<code>changes.json</code>) for RAG system sync</li>
<li>Access statistics — logs AI agent requests with a dedicated stats admin page</li>
<li>Optional frontmatter fields — hierarchy (parent/ancestors/children IDs), author display name, root-relative featured image paths</li>
<li>Topics section — appends a <code>## Topics</code> section with linked taxonomy terms to the Markdown body</li>
<li>Export preview — preview generated Markdown inline in the post editor without writing to disk</li>
<li>WP-CLI commands: <code>generate</code>, <code>generate-taxonomies</code>, <code>prune-stats</code>, <code>status</code>, <code>delete</code></li>
<li>Fully unit-tested</li>
</ul>

Markdown for Agents and Statistics

Serve pre-generated Markdown files to AI agents via HTTP content negotiation.

Azey

AI agents from ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and others read your content to generate answers — but they parse through HTML, JavaScript, and navigation just to reach it. Serve Markdown gives them a direct path: clean Markdown with structured metadata. When a crawler requests it — via an <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> header or a <code>.md</code> URL — your site responds instantly. No noise, no guesswork.
<h4>How It Works</h4>
Serve Markdown adds three capabilities to your WordPress site:
1. Content Negotiation 
When an AI crawler sends <code>Accept: text/markdown</code>, your site returns Markdown instead of HTML — no URL changes needed.
2. .md URL Suffix 
Append <code>.md</code> to any post or page URL (e.g. <code>example.com/my-article.md</code>) to get the Markdown version directly.
3. Markdown Auto-Discovery 
Every page includes a <code><link rel="alternate" type="text/markdown"></code> tag in the HTML head so crawlers can find your Markdown automatically.
<h4>What the Markdown Output Looks Like</h4>
Every Markdown response includes YAML frontmatter with structured metadata followed by your post content. Here is a real example:
<pre>
---
url: 'https://akumarjain.com/textexpander-year-in-review-2025/'
title: TextExpander Year in Review 2025
author:
 name: Ajay
 url: 'https://akumarjain.com/author/akumarjain/'
date: '2026-01-05T09:05:00+05:30'
modified: '2026-01-10T14:30:06+05:30'
type: post
categories:
 - 2025
 - Year in Review
tags:
 - '#ToolsIUse'
 - Productivity
 - Remote Work
image: 'https://akumarjain.com/wp-content/uploads/text-expander-year-in-review-2025.webp'
published: true
---

# TextExpander Year in Review 2025

In my daily work, I need to type the same words and phrases repeatedly...
</pre>
<h4>Features</h4>
Content Serving
<ul>
<li>Content negotiation via <code>Accept: text/markdown</code> header</li>
<li><code>.md</code> URL suffix on any post or page</li>
<li>Auto-discovery <code><link rel="alternate"></code> tag in page head</li>
<li>Each feature can be toggled independently</li>
<li>Choose which post types are exposed (posts, pages, custom post types)</li>
</ul>
Frontmatter and Metadata
<ul>
<li>YAML frontmatter with title, author, date, categories, tags, featured image, and more</li>
<li>Toggle individual metadata fields on or off</li>
<li>Add custom static key-value pairs (e.g., <code>license</code>, <code>language</code>)</li>
<li>Map WordPress custom fields (post meta) into the frontmatter</li>
</ul>
Access Control
<ul>
<li>Per-post opt-out via a sidebar checkbox in the editor</li>
<li>Exclude entire categories from Markdown serving</li>
<li>Exclude entire tags from Markdown serving</li>
<li>Only published posts are served — drafts and private posts are never exposed</li>
</ul>
Crawler Insights
<ul>
<li>Request log showing every Markdown request with timestamp, URL, bot name, and method</li>
<li>Automatic bot detection: ClaudeBot, GPTBot, ChatGPT, OAI-SearchBot, PerplexityBot, Googlebot, Bingbot, Cohere, Meta AI, Bytespider, Applebot, and more</li>
<li>Stats dashboard: total requests, requests today, unique bots</li>
<li>Filter log by individual bot</li>
<li>Configurable retention period with automatic pruning</li>
<li>One-click log clearing</li>
</ul>
Editor Integration
<ul>
<li>“Preview Markdown” button in the post editor sidebar</li>
<li>“View Markdown” link in the Posts and Pages list table</li>
<li>Meta box shows on all enabled post types</li>
</ul>
<h4>Performance</h4>
Markdown conversion only runs when specifically requested — regular visitors see the same HTML pages they always have. The crawler log uses a lightweight custom table with three safeguards against unbounded growth: time-based retention, a row count cap, and a table size cap.
<h4>Privacy</h4>
The crawler log stores IP addresses and user-agent strings from Markdown requests. This data stays in your WordPress database and is never sent to external services. You can disable logging entirely, configure a retention period, or clear the log at any time from the settings page.

Serve Markdown

Serve Markdown versions of your posts and pages to AI agents and crawlers. Content negotiation, .md URLs, auto-discovery, and crawler logging.

Markdown for Agents and Statistics vs Serve Markdown