Claude Code is very good at writing Markdown. That does not mean Markdown should be the default output for every task.

Thariq from the Claude Code team recently described a workflow where he increasingly asks Claude Code for HTML instead of Markdown. The reason is practical: long Markdown specs are easy to generate but hard to read. HTML can turn the same information into a navigable, visual, and sometimes interactive artifact.

When HTML Beats Markdown

Use HTML when the output is meant to be consumed by people, not maintained line by line in Git.

Good fits:

PR walkthroughs

design option comparisons

architecture explainers

onboarding docs

debugging reports

one-off planning tools

draggable prioritization boards

Keep Markdown for:

READMEs

changelogs

durable docs

API references

anything that needs clean Git diff review

Example: PR Review Artifact

Instead of:

Summarize this PR in Markdown.

Enter fullscreen mode

Exit fullscreen mode

Try:

Create a single self-contained HTML PR walkthrough.…