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Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

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Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#21

Post by tmhrtly »

My concern here is that by gravitating to HTML you lose the ability for a human (you!) to easily co-author the document with the LLM. If it’s just an explainer for your consumption, that’s not a concern - but if it’s a spec sheet for something more complex, I deeply value being able to dive in and edit what is produced for me. With a HTML doc it is much harder to do that than with MD.

Now of course you could just reprompt your LLM to change the HTML - but when I already have a clear idea of what I want to say in my head, that’s just another roadblock in the way.

If this pattern becomes more common I suspect human/LLM co-creation will further dwindle in favour of just delegating voice, tone and content choice to the LLM. I was surprised not to see this concern in the blog post’s FAQ.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#23

Post by jason1cho »

alsetmusic wrote: post #10

> 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 w…

If you want to be vibe all the way, why don't you ask a bot to summarize the long output?

Using bots has been insane and self-referrential.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#24

Post by htch »

We’ve been doing this for a couple of months at work for internal memos and decision records, it’s really powerful. I love being able to drop in interactive visuals and more dynamic content. We have a Cloudflare R2-backed Document Store for managing them, and CLI for publishing, and I’m working on an MCP server for long-term discovery and context.

My team kept asking if they could leave comments though, so I built Annotent [1] to help with that, which is also MCP-backed.

1. https://www.annotent.com/

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#25

Post by ryandsilva »

A couple of tradeoffs I don't see mentioned here for HTML vs MD: - HTML is significantly less token-efficient - Difficult to provide precise feedback on plans HTML, much easier to do this in MD.

Both of these tradeoffs set Anthropic up for success. Using HTML as our medium will increase token usage, and I'd bet they're investing in tools to mark up HTML (part of Claude Design) which will help improve lock-in. Either coincidence or brilliant strategy.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#26

Post by bigfudge »

tmhrtly wrote: post #21

My concern here is that by gravitating to HTML you lose the ability for a human (you!) to easily co-author the document with the LLM. If it’s just an explainer for your consumption, that’s not a concern - but if it’s a spec sheet for something more complex, I deeply value being able to dive in and edit what is produced for me. With a HTML doc it is much harder to do that than with MD. Now of course you could just rep…

[dead]

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#27

Post by jason1cho »

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #19
Kwpolska wrote: post #18

I guess the author has never heard of Markdown editors with a preview feature, and doesn't know that the Claude Code VS Code plugin opens plans in preview mode.

Are you just trying to pretend that Markdown is as rich as HTML and that all the use cases that they described are possible with Markdown?

Markdown was a hype in late 2010s that has cooled down due to chatbots.

In turn, chatbots pump up markdown by making it the default output format.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#28

Post by l3x4ur1n »

momojo wrote: post #12

When exploring a new idea or tool, my go to prompt is ``` In a single index.html, no dependencies, sparse styling, create an app that ``` Even before AI, it's how I built small tools, and there's something lovely about being able to email my friends the tool, and tell them "If you want to make a change, toss it to your LLM!"

Same. When I iterate on a design for a new client, I create a simple index.html with inline CSS and when I'm satisfied with the result I take the file and insert it next to my project template files and just ask the LLM to take the design from index.html and work it in the template files.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#29

Post by estetlinus »

ar_turnbull wrote: post #9

I’ve been prompting my way to all kinds of interactive HTML artifacts the last month or so. It’s way more fun than making decks and static documentation. I even did a workshop with PartyKit cursors, dot voting, reflection comments, and an individual rating at the end. Oh, and I can add super lightweight analytics so I know who actually reads my things or interacts with my prototypes. ^_^

Blog post plz

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#30

Post by ocimbote »

Have we gone full circle? From the invention of HTML to the rebirth of plain text with MD to the rediscovery of HTML anbrhe age of LLM?

The facts that this article needs to list the pros of HTML over MD, like inreraction, visual density, etc, is weird to me. Maybe the ahdience is not tech-savvy people but I read it as an unnecessary word salad.

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