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What is Markdown?

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that you can use to add formatting elements to plaintext text documents. It is a way of adding tags to plain text to structure a document and annotate it (e.g., bold, italics, links, images). It is simple and quick to learn but is very useful for writing websites, blog posts, and AI skills. Markdown can be converted to HTML, PDF and other formats.

Why is Markdown useful?

Markdown is becoming ubiquitous. Some examples of where Markdown is used include:

• The skills and memory files of AI tools are written in Markdown (and we will likely use Markdown to write our own skills and specific content for AI tools). For example, some important files such as CLAUDE.MD and AGENTS.MD (used by Open AI) use Markdown.
• Markdown is used in GitHub for README files and in other ways (issues, and pull requests).
• Markdown can be used to build a website (using GitHub pages).
• Markdown appears in Jupyter notebooks when writing Python, R and other languages as a better way of structuring and commenting the notebook.
• Markdown (unlike Word) is a plain text format so can be used in any editor and put under version control such as Git.
• Markdown is used in some popular editors such as VSCode and Obsidian, and in some note-taking apps such as Notion.

Markdown essentials

Markdown has a simple syntax for common formatting tasks:

• Headings: Use # for headings. For example, # Heading 1, ## Heading 2.
• Emphasis: Use * or _ for italics, and ** or __ for bold. For example, *italic*, **bold**.
• Lists: Use - or * for unordered lists, and numbers for ordered lists. For example:
  • Item 1
  • Item 2
• Links: Use [link text](URL). For example, [OpenAI](https://www.openai.com).
• Images: Use ![alt text](URL). For example, ![OpenAI Logo](https://www.openai.com/logo.png).
• Code: Use backticks for inline code and triple backticks for code blocks. For example, `inline code` and

  code block
  

Practical hints

Although we can use Markdown with any editor, even Notepad, some editors, such as VSCode, have better support for Markdown.

VSCode has an extension, MarkdownLink, so that we can make our Markdown perfect.