Markdown Source

AI tools process Markdown more efficiently than rendered HTML. Jamdesk makes the raw Markdown source of every page available by appending .md to any URL. No authentication required.

`.md` URL Extension

Append .md to any documentation page URL to get the raw source instead of rendered HTML:

# Rendered page
https://acme.jamdesk.app/getting-started

# Raw Markdown source
https://acme.jamdesk.app/getting-started.md

This works for any path depth. Here's what the response looks like:

curl https://acme.jamdesk.app/getting-started.md

---
title: Getting Started
description: Set up your first project in 5 minutes.
---

Welcome to the getting started guide.

## Prerequisites

<Note>You'll need Node.js 18 or later.</Note>

The response is the exact source file from your repository, including frontmatter and component tags.

Custom domains

Raw content works on custom domains too. Use the same URL your readers see, with .md appended:

# Docs served at root
curl https://docs.example.com/getting-started.md

# Docs served at /docs subpath
curl https://docs.example.com/docs/getting-started.md

Content Format

The raw content is Markdown extended with component tags like <Note>, <Steps>, and <Tabs>. Standard Markdown parsers will treat component tags as raw HTML. See Markdown basics for the full syntax reference.

Response Details

Headers

Header	Value	Purpose
`Content-Type`	`text/markdown; charset=utf-8`	Identifies content as Markdown
`Cache-Control`	`public, max-age=0, s-maxage=300, stale-while-revalidate=60`	CDN-cached for 5 minutes, no browser cache
`X-Robots-Tag`	`noindex, nofollow`	Prevents search engine indexing
`Content-Disposition`	`inline`	Displays in browser instead of downloading
`X-Frame-Options`	`DENY`	Prevents embedding in iframes
`Content-Security-Policy`	`default-src 'none'`	Blocks script execution

Error responses

Status	Meaning
`308`	Trailing slash redirect (e.g., `/intro.md/` redirects to `/intro.md`)
`404`	Page does not exist (returns an HTML error page, not Markdown)
`500`	Server error (returns an HTML error page)

Use with AI Tools

Markdown source URLs pair well with the MCP server. Use searchDocs to find pages by keyword, then fetch raw source for the matched page:

# 1. Search for a topic via MCP
curl -X POST https://acme.jamdesk.app/_mcp \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"searchDocs","arguments":{"query":"authentication"}}}'

# 2. Fetch the raw source of the top result
curl https://acme.jamdesk.app/guides/authentication.md

This gives AI tools both search and full-source access to your documentation.

What's Next?

MCP Server

Connect AI assistants directly to your docs

Markdown Basics

MDX syntax reference for documentation pages

.md URL Extension