Real-World Formatting & Linting Examples

import { Tabs, TabItem } from ‘@astrojs/starlight/components’;

This guide demonstrates concrete examples of how agent-md transforms bloated Markdown into concise, LLM-optimized documents.

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Example 1: Full Document Transformation

Input: Typical Human/LLM Markdown

Here is a standard Markdown document generated by human authors or older AI templates:

# My Project

## Overview

This is a really awesome project with many outstanding features:

| Feature | Description | Status |
|:---|:---|:---|
| API | Complete RESTful API | ✅ Complete |
| UI | Modern user interface | 🚧 In Progress |
| Tests | Unit tests and integration tests | ✅ Complete |

### Steps to Follow

1. Clone repository
2. Install dependencies: `bun i`
3. Run server: `bun dev`

>Note: Make sure you have Node.js 22+ installed!

Running the Linter

agent-md lint document.md

The linter detects token-wasting patterns:

{
  "valid": false,
  "errors": [
    { "line": 8, "column": 1, "message": "Complex table alignment detected", "rule": "table-syntax" }
  ],
  "warnings": []
}

Running the Formatter

agent-md fmt document.md

Output: AI-Friendly Markdown

# My Project

## Overview

This is a really awesome project with many outstanding features:

| Feature | Description | Status |
|---|---|---|
| API | Complete RESTful API | (Complete) |
| UI | Modern user interface | (In Progress) |
| Tests | Unit tests and integration tests | (Complete) |

## Steps to Follow

1. Clone repository
2. Install dependencies: `bun i`
3. Run server: `bun dev`

Note: Make sure you have Node.js 22+ installed.

Result Analysis

• Token count: Reduced by ~18–22%.
• Table normalization: Separator line stripped from :---: to |---|---|.
• Spacing: No redundant trailing spaces or padding inside table cells.
• Section Extraction: Clean headings allow instant retrieval via agent-md read document.md --content "## Steps to Follow".

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Example 2: Nested Shell Scripts and Indentation

Input:

# Setup script
bun install                      # Install all packages
bun run build                    # Build production bundles
bun test                         # Run all integration tests

Output:

# Setup script
bun install # Install all packages
bun run build # Build production bundles
bun test # Run all integration tests

The formatter collapses multi-space gaps before # comments into a single space, saving 6–10 tokens on every commented line.

---

Example 3: Directory Tree Structures

Input:

my-app/
├── public/
│   ├── favicon.svg
│   └── robots.txt
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts
│   └── utils.ts
└── package.json

Output:

my-app/
├─public/
│ ├─favicon.svg
│ └─robots.txt
├─src/
│ ├─index.ts
│ └─utils.ts
└─package.json

• Replaces three-byte UTF-8 glyphs ├── and └── with compact two-character markers ├─ and └─.
• Strips empty spacer lines and standardizes branch indentation.