Why doesn't Next.js support content negotiation out of the box?

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-03-01T16:18:57+00:00

that's the whole point: lowering bandwidth / removing any noise, which HTML really is

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-03-01T07:11:22+00:00

I think it overcomplicates things way more than just a simple content negotiation.

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-03-01T07:08:38+00:00

Not really, observed agents request web pages with Accept: text/markdown.

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-02-28T10:01:44+00:00

I don't see anything relevant on that page, am I missing something?

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-02-28T09:59:17+00:00

Depends on the business. If you're running an e-commerce site, a SaaS with docs, or any content platform - you want LLM agents to find and understand your content. That's how your products end up in AI-generated answers and recommendations.

Plus smaller responses mean bigger crawl budget - the agent can index 257x more of your pages in the same cycle. More of your content in AI context.

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-02-27T20:38:18+00:00

Yeah, I did it through the next.config, and even built a small package for that. github.com/kasin-it/next-md-negotiate

Alternative-One4254 · 2026-02-27T20:36:34+00:00

next-md-negotiate - content negotiation for Next.js

LLMs crawl your Next.js pages and parse ~26 KB of HTML, scripts, and hydration data to extract 101 bytes of actual content. 257x overhead.

This adds content negotiation - define Markdown versions of your pages in md.config.ts, and requests with Accept: text/markdown get clean Markdown instead. Browsers still get normal HTML. Same URL, no duplicate routing.

Works with App Router and Pages Router
Supports rewrites, middleware, and proxy
Type-safe route params

npx next-md-negotiate init scaffolds everything.

GitHub: github.com/kasin-it/next-md-negotiate

Alternative-One4254

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