I kept my AI files in Obsidian, but Google Docs finally learned its best trick

The introduction of Markdown, a text format created in 2004, has led to Google Docs' ability to open and edit .md files without converting them into another format. Google Docs, a leading productivity tool, has now integrated this basic text syntax from the early 2000s. The Markdown format uses simple keyboard symbols, such as pound signs for headings and asterisks for bold text, to structure web content without HTML tags.

This format has been widely adopted by bloggers and developers, with GitHub incorporating its own version of Markdown into the platform.

Markdown's simplicity makes it an attractive choice for language models, as it requires fewer processing resources and generates less data clutter. Unlike raw HTML, Markdown provides a hierarchical structure through headers and lists, helping AI models understand the relationships between sections. For users, the benefits of using Markdown are clear: the flexibility to render, edit, and re-render files as needed, ultimately converting them into other formats like Docs, Word, PDF, or web pages with the formatting already embedded.

However, using Markdown comes with a trade-off. Native Markdown files lose proprietary features of Google Docs, such as visual styling elements. While some may lament the loss of font colors, highlighting, and text alignment, the simplicity and efficiency of Markdown are appealing. In the author's case, keeping AI-generated files in Markdown within the Obsidian note-taking app has proven to be a seamless solution, eliminating the need for separate files and ensuring consistent formatting across different platforms.