11. Markdown Output

Markdown is readable for humans and parseable for machines. Use markdown when output needs to be both human-readable and processable.

Common markdown structures for structured output:

Tables for structured data:

Analyze these sales figures and return a markdown table with columns: Region, Revenue, Growth %, Top Product.

| Region | Revenue | Growth | Top Product |
|--------|---------|--------|-------------|

Lists for enumerated items:

Extract key points from this article and return them as a markdown list:

- Point 1
- Point 2

Code blocks for formatted text:

Format the API response as a markdown code block with syntax highlighting:

```json
{
  "status": "success"
}

**Headings** for hierarchical output:
```text
Summarize this research paper using headings:

# Summary
[2-3 sentences]

# Methodology
[1-2 sentences]

# Key Findings
[bullet list]

# Limitations
[bullet list]

To prevent markdown escaping issues:

Return markdown only. Do not wrap in code fences. Do not escape characters inside the markdown.

If you need raw markdown without rendering artifacts, specify:

Output raw markdown text. Do not include backticks, code fences, or HTML. Do not escape special characters.

For outputs that will be rendered by a markdown processor, be careful with special characters:

In the output, if text contains pipes (|), escape them as \| so table parsing works correctly.

Local verification checkpoint

Run the smallest example from this chapter in a local workspace and record the package version, runtime, data path, and observed output. If the result depends on model size, vector count, CPU/GPU backend, or available memory, note that constraint beside the exercise so the lesson remains reproducible.