The Markdown option publishes your entire project as plain text Markdown files. The most common use of these files is for efficient input of your documentation to AI systems. In addition to this, you can also export hybrid HTML/Markdown WebHelp export that includes Markdown versions of all files to make your WebHelp accessible to AI crawlers on the Web.

See Markdown Export for AI for full details on Markdown export.

Markdown is ideal for feeding documentation to AI systems

AI systems tend to struggle with all the additional formatting and structuring tags and other code in HTML files. PDF and Word files are also not ideal, and like formatting-heavy HTML files, they will often be rejected by the programs used for ingesting data into AI models. This can lead to frustrating delays and time-consuming edits in the attempt to get the AI system to accept the files. (Ask us how we know — we've been there...)

In contrast, minimalist Markdown files with everything except the most basic structure removed are ideal for input to AI systems. They are ingested extremely quickly with generally a 100% acceptance rate. That is exactly what Help+Manual's Markdown export generates.

What can you configure to improve your Markdown version for AI?

There are a number of factors that will make your documentation more accessible to AI. Help+Manual's Markdown export already includes all the structural features required, but you can also make your content more accessible.

Use descriptive topic titles and topic IDs

It is very helpful for AI systems if they can quickly identify what your topic files are about. The first line of action for this are the titles of your topics, and also the topic IDs, which are the filenames of both the topics and the output files. A topic ID like THX_1138 tells the AI system nothing. An ID like WidgetConfiguration is much better. Similarly, clear and descriptive titles will help AI systems to find the information users ask about  more reliably.

Use the Description feature for your topics

You can enter a summary of your topics in the Description field in the Topic Options tab you can select on the left of the topic editor. If you enter a description here it will be included at the beginning of the Markdown files and the AI systems will read this first.

These descriptions shouldn't be a full summary of the topic. Instead, try to tell the AI system what the topic is about, i.e. what can be found there. The AI system doesn't need a full summary of the topic — it can generate that itself — it needs to know where to look. Your description is also the place to use keywords that users are likely to use when searching for the information. But don't just list keywords like in an index. It is much more effective to use them in the description's sentences.

Index keywords are not important for AI

Although you might expect index keywords to be helpful, they aren't. AI systems work best on full language sentences and they won't make use of topic keywords, so these are not so important here. The place to use keywords is in the DEescription (see above).