Spec-driven development: Using Markdown as a programming language when building with AI
I coded my latest app entirely in Markdown and let GitHub Copilot compile it into Go. This resulted in cleaner specs, faster iteration, and no more context loss. āØ
The post [Spec-driven development: Using Markdown as a programming language when building with AI](https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/generative-ai/spec-driven-development-using-markdown-as-a-p ⦠ā Read more
I finally solved the loading issue in my WIP reader, TwtStrm (and apologies again to anyone that got spammed while I was diagnosing the issue).
After another round of coding this weekend, Iām happy to report that it now renders all the twts (with markdown parsing), complete with localstorage and server-based file caching.
@bender@twtxt.net Right. š groff, Markdown, groff. Justified, unjustified, justified.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de I noticed that:
gopher://uninformativ.de/0/phlog/2018/2018-06/2018-06-01.txt
Is the first non-justified, and it is when you started using Markdown. The last justified one was:
gopher://uninformativ.de/0/phlog/2018/2018-05/2018-05-27.txt
So, I might have found the mystery! :-D
@bender@twtxt.net The address is/was correct but probably got mangled by the Markdown renderer. Letās try again in a code block:
gopher://uninformativ.de/0/phlog/2025/2025-09/2025-09-03--roophloch.txt
There is a missing feature Iāve been intending to add to though, which is that any link that looks like a URL that might be an image, for example, ends with .png or .jpg or whatever, we should just render that as an image and not expect users to wrap it in Markdown image links 
Looks like hereās something wrong with Markdown parsing. š¤ The original twt looks like this:
>This extension was turned off because it is no longer supported
Thanks Google.
This browser was uninstalled because it absolutely sucks!
So only the first line should be a quote.
@prologic@twtxt.net I am finding writing my Notes very therapeutic. Just create a markdown file and commit, push, and itās live. Whatever comes to mind, whatever I want to keep as relevant. Silly things, more like a dump.
If I feel like it, I do. If not, I donāt. Not social, not intended for anyone to see them. I am enjoying it!
Makefile.md - Possibly Use(ful|less) Polyglot Synthesis of Makefile and Markdown
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i feel so powerful i wrote a 3 line script that takes an inputted markdown filename from the current working directory and then spits out a nicely formatted html page. pandoc does all the work i did nothing
How to make your images in Markdown on GitHub adjust for dark mode and light mode
When you want your images to look good in Markdown on GitHub, you might have to adjust for the UI around them.
The post How to make your images in Markdown on GitHub adjust for dark mode and light mode appeared first on [The GitHub B ⦠ā Read more
oh out of boredom yesterday i made my blog available via markdown files too so you can use charmbracelet/glow to read them in your terminal :)
basically i just set up a file directory on a path of my blog, organized the MD files by year, and so in theory you can navigate to that path and choose a folder, then copy a link to a markdown post and run this:
glow -p https://bubblegum.girlonthemoon.xyz/md/2025/2025-03-31%20premature%20reflections%20on%20sudden%20responsibility.md
and then as long as you have glow installed, you can read my posts from the terminal :D itās so cool
Video: How to create checklists in Markdown for easier task tracking
Ever wondered how to create checklists in your GitHub repositories, Issues, and PRs? Make task lists more manageable in your GitHub repositories, issues, and pull requests.
The post Video: How to create checklists in Markdown for easier task tracking appeared first on [The ⦠ā Read more
@prologic@twtxt.net All the URL are missing the protocol part (https://) and my markdown parser does not know how to handle but I see yarnd does it just fine.
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org
it look like your markdown image tags are missing the protocol part (https://) so they donāt render at least on my server: https://darch.dk/timeline/conv/3vtnszq
Some satisfying icicle-breaking in our backyard: photos.falsifian.org/video/sM7G3vfS6yuc/VID_20250217_203250.mp4
I couldnāt resist taking home a prize:
Itās been snowy here in #Toronto.
(I tried formatting the images in markdown for the benefit of yarn and any other clients that understand it.)
Added support for uploading images to to #Timeline
Right now you need to copy the markdown code yourself, but next up would be to lean some JS or use HTMX to make the process more smooth.
@prologic@twtxt.net you change something up on how markdown gets rendered?
@eapl.me@eapl.me here are my replies (somewhat similar to Lyseās and Jamesā)
Metadata in twts: Key=value is too complicated for non-hackers and hard to write by hand. So if there is a need then we should just use #NSFS or the alt-text file in markdown image syntax
if something is NSFWIDs besides datetime. When you edit a twt then you should preserve the datetime if location-based addressing should have any advantages over content-based addressing. If you change the timestamp the its a new post. Just like any other blog cms.
Caching, Yes all good ideas, but that is more a task for the clients not the serving of the twtxt.txt files.
Discovery: User-agent for discovery can become better. Iām working on a wrapper script in PHP, so you donāt need to go to Apaches log-files to see who fetches your feed. But for other Gemini and gopher you need to relay on something else. That could be using my webmentions for twtxt suggestion, or simply defining an email metadata field for letting a person know you follow their feed. Interesting read about why WebMetions might be a bad idea. Twtxt being much simple that a full featured IndieWeb sites, then a lot of the concerns does not apply here. But thatās the issue with any open inbox. This is hard to solve without some form of (centralized or community) spam moderation.
Support more protocols besides http/s. Yes why not, if we can make clients that merge or diffident between the same feed server by multiples URLs
Languages: If the need is big then make a separate feed. I donāt mind seeing stuff in other langues as it is low. You got translating tool if you need to know whats going on. And again when there is a need for easier switching between posting to several feeds, then itās about building clients with a UI that makes it easy. No something that should takes up space in the format/protocol.
Emojis: Iām not sure what this is about. Do you want to use emojis as avatar in CLI clients or it just about rendering emojis?
@bender@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net Iām not exactly asking yarnd to change. If you are okay with the way it displayed my twts, then by all means, leave it as is. I hope you wonāt mind if I continue to write things like 1/4 to mean āfirst out of fourā.
What has text/markdown got to do with this? I donāt think Markdown says anything about replacing 1/4 with ¼, or other similar transformations. Itās not needed, because ¼ is already a unicode character that can simply be directly inserted into the text file.
Whatās wrong with my original suggestion of doing the transformation before the text hits the twtxt.txt file? @prologic@twtxt.net, I think it would achieve what you are trying to achieve with this content-type thing: if someone writes 1/4 on a yarnd instance or any other client that wants to do this, it would get transformed, and other clients simply wouldnāt do the transformation. Every client that supports displaying unicode characters, including Jenny, would then display ¼ as ¼.
Alternatively, if you prefer yarnd to pretty-print all twts nicely, even ones from simpler clients, thatās fine too and you donāt need to change anything. My 1/4 -> ¼ thing is nothing more than a minor irritation which probably isnāt worth overthinking.
(#2024-09-24T12:45:54Z) @prologic@twtxt.net Iām not really buying this one about readability. Itās easy to recognize that this is a URL and a date, so you skim over it like you would we mentions and markdown links and images. If you are not suppose to read the raw file, then we might a well jam everything into JSON like mastodon
@bender@twtxt.net Ha! Maybe I should get on the Markdown train. Youāre taking away my excuses.
Sorry, youāre right, I should have used numbers!
Iām donāt understand what āpreserve the original hashā could mean other than āmake sure thereās still a twt in the feed with that hashā. Maybe the text could be clarified somehow.
Iām also not sure what you mean by markdown already being part of it. Of course people can already use Markdown, just like presumably nothing stopped people from using (twt subjects) before they were formally described. But itās not universal; e.g. as a jenny user I just see the plain text.
@prologic@twtxt.net Thanks for writing that up!
I hope it can remain a living document (or sequence of draft revisions) for a good long time while we figure out how this stuff works in practice.
I am not sure how I feel about all this being done at once, vs. letting conventions arise.
For example, even today I could reply to twt abc1234 with ā(#abc1234) Edit: ā¦ā and I think all you humans would understand it as an edit to (#abc1234). Maybe eventually it would become a common enough convention that clients would start to support it explicitly.
Similarly we could just start using 11-digit hashes. We should iron out whether itās sha256 or whatever but thereās no need get all the other stuff right at the same time.
I have similar thoughts about how some users could try out location-based replies in a backward-compatible way (append the replyto: stuff after the legacy (#hash) style).
However I recognize that Iām not the one implementing this stuff, and itās less work to just have everything determined up front.
Misc comments (I havenāt read the whole thing):
Did you mean to make hashes hexadecimal? You lose 11 bits that way compared to base32. Iād suggest gaining 11 bits with base64 instead.
āClients MUST preserve the original hashā ā do you mean they MUST preserve the original twt?
Thanks for phrasing the bit about deletions so neutrally.
I donāt like the MUST in āClients MUST follow the chain of reply-to referencesā¦ā. If someone writes a client as a 40-line shell script that requires the user to piece together the threading themselves, IMO we shouldnāt declare the client non-conforming just because they didnāt get to all the bells and whistles.
Similarly I donāt like the MUST for user agents. For one thing, you might want to fetch a feed without revealing your identty. Also, it raises the bar for a minimal implementation (Iām again thinking again of the 40-line shell script).
For āwho followsā lists: why must the long, random tokens be only valid for a limited time? Do you have a scenario in mind where they could leak?
Why canāt feeds be served over HTTP/1.0? Again, thinking about simple software. I recently tried implementing HTTP/1.1 and it wasnāt too bad, but 1.0 would have been slightly simpler.
Why get into the nitty-gritty about caching headers? This seems like generic advice for HTTP servers and clients.
Iām a little sad about other protocols being not recommended.
I donāt know how I feel about including markdown. I donāt mind too much that yarn users emit twts full of markdown, but Iām more of a plain text kind of person. Also it adds to the length. I wonder if putting a separate document would make more sense; that would also help with the length.
i feel like we should isolate a subset of markdown that makes sense and built it into lextwt. it already has support for links and images. maybe basic formatting bold, italic. possibly block quote and bullet lists. no tables or footnotes
New York Times Source Code Leaked (and verified)
Over 3.6 Million files totaling over 334 GB. And itās real. Source code. Documentation. Markdown files. The works. ā Read more
Twtxt spec enhancement proposal thread š§µ
Adding attributes to individual twts similar to adding feed attributes in the heading comments.
https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/go-lextwt/pulls/17
The basic use case would be for multilingual feeds where there is a default language and some twts will be written a different language.
As seen in the wild: https://eapl.mx/twtxt.txt
The attributes are formatted as [key=value]
They can show up in the twt anywhere it is not enclosed by another element such as codeblock or part of a markdown link.
@eapl.me@eapl.me kinda like the format for markdown images?  ?
podman works with TLS. It does not have the "--docker" siwtch so you have to remove that and use the exact replacement commands that were in that github comment.
@prologic@twtxt.net what do you mean when you say āDocker APIā? There are multiple possible meanings for that. podman conforms to some of Dockerās APIs and itās unclear to me which one you say itās not conforming to.
You just have to Google āpodman Docker APIā and you find stuff like this: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/podman-rest-api
What is Podmanās REST API?Podmanās REST API consists of two components:
- A Docker-compatible portion called Compat API
- A native portion called Libpod API that provides access to additional features not available in Docker, including pods
Or this: https://docs.podman.io/en/latest/markdown/podman-system-service.1.html
The REST API provided by podman system service is split into two parts: a compatibility layer offering support for the Docker v1.40 API, and a Podman-native Libpod layer.
I setup Joplin with caddy as the WebDAV server. Works okay. The e2e encryption can get messed up sometimes. Supports markdown and images.
An option would be to have /twtxt.txt be the base functionality as bukket intended without subject tags, markdown, images and such truncated to 140 chars. a /yarn.txt that has all the extentions as we know and love. and maybe a /.well-known/webfinger + (TBD endpoint) that adds on the crypto enhancements that further extend things.
@prologic@twtxt.net The parse is correct. this seems to be something with the markdown render.
The parse is correct. this seems to be something with the markdown render.
Math support in Markdown
Mathematical expressions are key to information sharing amongst engineers, scientists, data scientists, and mathematicians. Today we are pleased to announce that math expressions can be rendered in Markdown on GitHub using $$ as a delimiter for code blocks with math content or the $ delimiter for inline math expressions. ā Read more
Supercharging GitHub Actions with Job Summaries
You can now output and group custom Markdown content on the Actions run summary page. ā Read more
@ullarah@txt.quisquiliae.com works for me! A tricky bitmight be if it splits within a codeblock so markdown canāt parse
Include diagrams in your Markdown files with Mermaid
A picture tells a thousand words. Now you can quickly create and edit diagrams in markdown using words with Mermaid support in your Markdown files. ā Read more
@fastidious@arrakis.netbros.com the things Gemini has going for it are mutual TLS and lack of JavaScript. Which makes for a secure albeit boring experience (much like gopher). The fake markdown is a bit of a drag.
A render mode for Gemini probably wouldnt be too hard. There are markdown to Gemini libs out there.
With Web3 the whole trust a 3rd party browser ext + high fees + env impact for compute and storage are serious no gos for me.. I have heard one too many horror stories about clicking the wrong link and some script draining your metamask wallet.
Whatās new from GitHub Changelog? November 2021 recap
We shipped a ton of updates in November, from the push notification for PR review activities on the go, to an easy way to create Markdown links. ā Read more
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org So.. in the great wisdom of markdown parser.. it only provides the Title and deletes the alt. :D i guess i could write out the alt and title as the same value
@fastidious@arrakis.netbros.com
The signs show fine on jenny. So, it is a display thing. Probably related to Markdown.
Oof! I found a bug on Yarnās Markdown rendering, @prologic@twtxt.net. See OP.
@movq@www.uninformativ.de, would you know the regex to use within .muttrc to colorise a Markdown code block like the one below?
# This one works for `code`, but that's about it.
(^|[[:space:][:punct:]])\`[^\`]+\`([[:space:][:punct:]]|$)
@eldersnake@yarn.andrewjvpowell.com There isnāt an equivalent for those because:
Markdown is not a replacement for HTML, or even close to it. Its syntax is very small, corresponding only to a very small subset of HTML tags.
You can read more of its philosophy at Daring Fireball. There are enhancements to Markdown (CommonMark, for example), that add extra to it.