HTML is the new Markdown: How Anthropic engineers are building with Claude Code | Thariq Shihipar

**Thariq Shihipar** (0:00)
Markdown became a really popular way of interacting with agents, but the plans are so long, I honestly have stopped reading them. And this is honestly a mistake. I think that you still need to be really in the loop.

**Claire Vo** (0:10)
Plans matter, PRDs matter, spec matters.

**Thariq Shihipar** (0:13)
When you say, okay, Claude can run for eight hours, what you're really saying is Claude can spend 500 bucks. All of us are becoming these compute allocators now, right? And so you have to decide what is worthwhile spending the compute on.

**Claire Vo** (0:25)
People ask me all the time, Claire, you said product management is dead, what's next? I'm going to say you're a compute allocator, babe. That's the job now.

**Thariq Shihipar** (0:32)
HTML is a lot easier to read, and so it's just a richer communication medium between you and Claude.

**Claire Vo** (0:37)
Instead of saying, here's a Markdown document, it was like, what's the best way to convey this information? So you can actually engage with it and pick something.

**Thariq Shihipar** (0:45)
This is the plan, it's purely in HTML, this is something that I will actually read.

**Claire Vo** (0:50)
This is not even personal software, it's like micro software on top of micro software.
Welcome back to How I AI, I'm Claire Vo, product leader and AI obsessive here on a mission to help you build better with these new tools. Recently, I was able to attend Code with Claude, Anthropic's first developer conference, and as part of that, I got to spend a little time with Thariq, who works on Claude Code and taught me something that has blown my mind ever since I heard it, HTML is the new Markdown. He's going to show us how to use Claude Code to generate rich artifacts that both you and the agents can enjoy working on. Let's get to it. This episode is brought to you by Celigo. Every company today wants AI to improve how work gets done. The fastest way is building it directly into everyday business processes, automating employee onboarding, keeping customer data accurate, managing orders and inventory, or resolving finance and operations issues. When AI lives inside the flow of work, it can update records, trigger approvals, route work, and kick off the next step across systems. That's how teams operationalize AI and deliver measurable results. Celigo makes this possible. Now, with Celigo Aura, it's never been easier. Celigo Aura gives you access to the entire platform through natural language, connecting your systems and turning intent into action, all of it under your control. Companies like Databricks, PayPal and Alipop rely on Celigo to run critical business operations at scale. Ready to operationalize AI? Visit celigo.com/howiai.
That's celigo.com/howiai.
Welcome to How I AI.

**Thariq Shihipar** (2:42)
Thanks for having me.

**Claire Vo** (2:43)
I am so excited to be here at Code with Claude in San Francisco. There's a lot of exciting things that were announced, and we'll get to that in a little bit, but you told me something I was not expecting to hear today, which is, you heard it here first, HTML is the new Markdown. Tell us more.

**Thariq Shihipar** (3:00)
I mean, I think Markdown became a really popular way of interacting with agents, especially like, you know, Opus 4 and Claude 3.5, where, you know, they have a plan, and the plan is like how to do this feature, and maybe it's like 50 lines of code, and you can edit it, right? Like, I think back then, you were still like reading all of the outputs and editing the Markdown and making it right. But, you know, as the agents have gotten longer and longer running, when you have Opus 4.5 and 4.7, they're running for like an hour or something, and the plans are so long, I honestly have stopped reading them.
And this was honestly a mistake. Like, I think that you still need to be really in the loop. You really need to understand what the agents are doing.
But like a thousand line Markdown file, you know, I don't even edit them anymore. I just have Claude to edit them instead. And so I think one of the things that I've been seeing emergently in the Cloud Code team is that like they, that we're using HTML files instead. And so HTML is like, the models are still very good at it. They have a lot of more context now, so you can spend the more extra tokens. And they, like, it's a lot easier to read. Like they can have a lot more information, a lot scrollable, more scrollable. And when you're talking about implementation, like, you know, sometimes you see Claude make these like little ASCII Markdown things, where you're like, oh, like, here's a little, you know, little mock-up, and it's trying really hard. In HTML, it doesn't need to try nearly as hard, right? Like, it can actually draw, like, things that you can look at. And so it's just a richer communication medium between you and Claude.