HTML to Markdown

Convert an HTML fragment or document you already have into clean markdown. hiddenContent reports text a reader cannot see (HTML comments, display:none or hidden elements, white-on-white or off-screen text, zero-width characters) and quotes any of it that reads as an instruction to an AI; send hidden: "drop" to leave it out of the markdown. Send POST /api/html-to-markdown with the required field html and pay $0.001 per call over x402 or MPP, or call it free by solving a proof-of-work challenge. It returns a JSON object with markdown and hiddenContent.

(To fetch + convert a live URL, use /api/extract.)

Try in playground →

Parameters

Example request

curl -i -X POST https://agent402.tools/api/html-to-markdown \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"html":"<h1>Hi</h1><p><b>bold</b></p>"}'

Without payment this returns HTTP 402 Payment Required with the exact price for html-to-markdown; any x402 v2 or MPP client pays it and retries.

Example response

{
  "markdown": "# Hi\n\n**bold**",
  "hiddenContent": {
    "mode": "keep",
    "total": 0,
    "found": {
      "comments": 0,
      "cssHidden": 0,
      "hiddenAttr": 0,
      "offscreen": 0,
      "invisibleChars": 0,
      "attributes": 0
    },
    "instructionLike": []
  }
}

From an MCP client

catalog.call {
  "slug": "html-to-markdown",
  "params": {
    "html": "<h1>Hi</h1><p><b>bold</b></p>"
  }
}

On the hosted connector at https://agent402.tools/mcp, catalog.call runs html-to-markdown free (rate-limited, no wallet). Local install: npx -y agent402-mcp.

Errors and behavior

• html is required. An input the tool rejects returns an HTTP 4xx whose body carries error, tool, expected, required and example, so the caller can correct it.
• A paid call that ends in any status of 400 or above is not charged over x402, MPP or a prepaid credits key: settlement is canceled when the tool fails. The exception is a Tempo push credential, a transfer the buyer sent before the call: it settles before the tool runs, so if the tool then fails the payment is recorded as a refund owed to the paying wallet.
• Free tier: no outbound network call leaves the server for this tool, so proof-of-work (16 leading zero bits of sha256) pays for it.
• A GET or HEAD to /api/html-to-markdown returns the same 402 quote, so the price can be read without a body.
• An Idempotency-Key header makes a retried paid call replay the first 200 instead of charging again (an answer larger than 1 MB is not replayed).

Paid call (JavaScript agent)

import { wrapFetchWithPayment } from "@x402/fetch";
import { x402Client } from "@x402/core/client";
import { registerExactEvmScheme } from "@x402/evm/exact/client";
import { privateKeyToAccount } from "viem/accounts";

const client = new x402Client();
client.setSpendControls?.({ maxAmountPerPayment: "$0.001" }); // refuse any quote above this tool's price
registerExactEvmScheme(client, { signer: privateKeyToAccount(KEY) });
const payFetch = wrapFetchWithPayment(fetch, client);

const res = await payFetch("https://agent402.tools/api/html-to-markdown", {
  method: "POST",
  headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
  body: JSON.stringify({
    "html": "<h1>Hi</h1><p><b>bold</b></p>"
  }),
});

No wallet? Pay with compute

Fetch a challenge, solve the sha256 puzzle (16 leading zero bits, a fraction of a second of CPU), and resend with the X-Pow-Solution header:

import { createHash } from "node:crypto";
const lz = (b) => { let t = 0; for (const x of b) { if (!x) { t += 8; continue; } t += Math.clz32(x) - 24; break; } return t; };
const c = await (await fetch("https://agent402.tools/api/pow/challenge?slug=html-to-markdown")).json();
let n = 0;
while (lz(createHash("sha256").update(c.challenge + ":" + n).digest()) < c.difficulty) n++;
await fetch("https://agent402.tools/api/html-to-markdown", { method: "POST", headers: { "X-Pow-Solution": c.token + ":" + n, "Content-Type": "application/json" }, body: JSON.stringify({"html":"<h1>Hi</h1><p><b>bold</b></p>"}) });

Part of these workflows

HTML to Markdown is one step in these 2 skill packs, each sold as a single call:

• Convert anything to markdown - Convert anything at a URL - HTML, PDF, or an image - to clean markdown. The 'I have a URL but it might be any content-type, give me markdown either way' workflow: HEAD-detect the content-type, branch to the right deterministic extractor (article extract for HTML, pdf-to-markdown for PDFs, OCR for images), and report token/word stats on the output so the caller can budget the result against an LLM context window.
• Markdown to HTML round-trip - Markdown to HTML and back - a round-trip conversion that proves fidelity and gives you both formats from one input.

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