As a developer, you aren’t just reading documentation anymore. You’re feeding it into AI tools, dropping it into internal wikis, and referencing it across a dozen different apps. To keep up with how you actually work, we’re introducing two new “Copy Markdown” and “View Markdown” buttons across most pages on our primary Google developer platforms.
Our goal is to make it easier to use Google’s documentation as high-quality context for AI-driven tools. LLMs use standard markdown. By giving you raw markdown, we ensure the AI understands the code blocks and hierarchy perfectly.
Examples of using the markdown buttons
The following is a list of some examples where these markdown buttons speed up your workflow:
- Well-formatted AI prompts. Working in Google AI Studio or Gemini? Copying a complex integration guide in Markdown format preserves the structure, headers, and code blocks. This format preservation gives the AI high-quality, perfectly formatted context to answer your specific questions or generate custom code.
- Instant internal wikis & notes. Need to share a workflow with your team? Click “Copy Markdown” and paste it directly into Notion, Obsidian, GitHub Wikis, or Jira. The formatting stays perfectly intact.
- Seamless HTML conversion. Because it’s standard Markdown, you can easily pipe it through any standard Markdown-to-HTML converter if you need to render our documentation snippets in your own custom dashboards or internal tools.
The URL hack to view markdown
You can view the markdown version of almost any page simply by appending .md.txt to the end of the URL.
Try it out: Go to https://developers.google.com/knowledge/reference/corpus-reference and change it to https://developers.google.com/knowledge/reference/corpus-reference.md.txt
Scaling up? Use our APIs
The new Markdown buttons are perfect for quick, manual tasks. But if you are building autonomous agents or need programmatic access to our docs, we have you covered there, too:
- Developer Knowledge API. The standard for programmatically searching and retrieving the most recent Google developer content.
- Developer Knowledge MCP Server. Using agentic tools like the Gemini CLI or Antigravity? Our Model Context Protocol (MCP) server gives your AI agents a direct, structured connection to our documentation and sample code.
For more information, see the blog Introducing the Developer Knowledge API and MCP Server.
Supported Google websites for copy and view markdown buttons
All of Google Cloud, Android, and Firebase documentation now lets you copy and view markdown text with a single click.
For more information on the full list of Google sites with the new markdown buttons, see Corpus reference | Developer Knowledge.
FAQs
Is this the exact source code of the site?
No. While much of our documentation is authored in Markdown, the output you get from the “View Markdown” button is processed and optimized for public consumption.
Can I use this to scrape the site for model training?
No. The buttons and the .md.txt endpoints are built as a convenience feature for individual developers, not for bulk data harvesting. If your team requires large-scale data exports, stay tuned! We are working on robust solutions for bulk access.
Is this the best way for Agents to read the docs?
Markdown content is much easier for Agents to read and understand. But, we think the experience is even better when you add the Developer Knowledge MCP server to your coding tool of choice.
Copy, paste, prompt: ‘Copy/View Markdown’ is live across Google’s documentation was originally published in Google Cloud – Community on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
Source Credit: https://medium.com/google-cloud/copy-paste-prompt-copy-view-markdown-is-live-across-google-s-documentation-5da0370bb4ea?source=rss—-e52cf94d98af—4
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