Markdown Files Endure as AI Intelligence Evolves Daily
Garry Tan is making a simple argument for an AI moment that changes every week: keep your data in formats that outlast the tools touching it.
Entities: Garry Tan, kepano
In a post on X, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan argued that "Markdown files are universal and will survive millennia," calling them a strong data format while the AI "intelligence stack" keeps changing quickly. He was amplifying an earlier post from Kepano, which framed the idea as "file over app": formats evolve over decades, apps over months, and intelligence every day, so durable files deserve the deepest investment.
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Markdown files are universal and will survive millennia Unsurprisingly they are a fantastic data format when the intelligence stack is in flux at this extreme pace
formats evolve over decades, apps over months, intelligence is evolving every day in terms of pace layers "file over app" defines priorities: invest deeply in formats, and don't expect anything at the intelligence layer to last very long
formats evolve over decades, apps over months, intelligence is evolving every day in terms of pace layers "file over app" defines priorities: invest deeply in formats, and don't expect anything at the intelligence layer to last very long
@garrytan XHTML is the sweet spot. Markdown is fine if you pretend a lot of complexity, like encoding, doesn’t exist, or need to represent a math formula, completely ignore rich media, don’t try to link within a document…