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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

#11

Post by 2001zhaozhao »

I'm thinking of adding support for GitHub-flavored markdown (including things like Mermaid diagrams) in my agent wrapper tool and then adding something like a skill for Claude Code to always write GitHub-flavored markdown and use its features when communicating with me. Seems a lot better than general Markdown.

Though now I'm wondering: why not just add full HTML embedding support as well? I'm talking not just for specific deliverables, but for any of the agent's responses with the user.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#12

Post by momojo »

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!"

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#13

Post by postalcoder »

Yeah, I agree with this. I've been doing the same thing. Whenever I have to do a review, I ask the llm to create a dashboard. It's a godsend for reducing cognitive burden.

I think the reason stuff like this wasn't done earlier was due to fears about context pollution, but post training has gotten so good that you can do virtually anything in the context window and not have it affect the quality of output.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#15

Post by jaaron »

For similar reasons, I strongly prefer org-mode to markdown. I find that with org-mode and extensions (such as in-line elisp) I have a _significantly_ more powerful system. For example, specs can have tasks and roadmaps inline which reduces risk of drift. The biggest downside is, unfortunately, not enough folks are emacs proficient.

I hadn't considered HTML and I'm definitely going to try this.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#16

Post by drob518 »

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!"

I never really thought about this use case before, and I feel a bit dumb because of that. It’s so obvious that it would be useful. My focus with LLMs so far has been on The App, not all the ancillary stuff around The App. All that ancillary stuff doesn’t have to be fully complete or polished and doesn’t have to handle every possible case. It just needs to be functional enough to be useful. When you’re done with it, throw it away and generate a new one tomorrow.

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#19

Post by weird-eye-issue »

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?

Re: Using Claude Code: The unreasonable effectiveness of HTML

#20

Post by drob518 »

BretonForearm wrote: post #2

Many of us had CC routinely generate HTML ever since it became available. Surprised that it's presented as some kind of novelty.

I don’t think the idea of generating HTML is a novelty. Anyone using an LLM to create a web app has done that. Any “novelty” here is the idea of favoring HTML rather than Markdown for internal docs like specs, design docs, etc. Maybe you were already doing that. I sure haven’t been. In hindsight it’s obvious that it would be useful in some circumstances. Previously, I’ve had a bias against HTML because it’s annoying to read in a text editor.
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