# What is content negotiation (Markdown for AI agents)?

> Content negotiation lets one web address serve different formats. Some sites serve AI agents a clean Markdown version of a page when they ask for it.

_UK and US · Updated 2026-10-27 · Akkrev, https://akkrev.com/glossary/content-negotiation/_

**Content negotiation** is a standard web mechanism where a visitor says which formats it prefers, using the "Accept" header, and the server answers with the best match. Browsers ask for HTML. A tool can ask for JSON, or for Markdown.

## Markdown for agents

Some websites now serve a plain Markdown version of each page to AI agents that ask for `text/markdown`, while people keep getting the normal design. Markdown strips away menus, scripts and styling, so the agent gets the content in fewer tokens and with less to misread. Some sites also publish the Markdown version at a predictable address, such as the page's path ending in `.md`.

## Who uses it

As of late 2026, a handful of coding agents send the header; most major chat and search agents don't. It's cheap to support and harmless for human visitors, so it's a low-risk addition rather than a ranking factor. akkrev.com serves Markdown this way on every page.

## Related

[llms.txt](https://akkrev.com/glossary/llms-txt/) is a site-level summary for AI; content negotiation works page by page.

## Why it matters for AI visibility

Offering a Markdown version of your pages makes it easy for AI to read your facts accurately.

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