anthropic's thariq says use html in claude code - at 15x cost

thariq from anthropic just published a post calling everyone to spend 2-4x more tokens on claude code

the argument: switch from markdown to html outputs because he "tend[s] not to actually read more than a 100-line markdown file"

what this actually costs at $25/m output tokens on opus 4.6:

- boring markdown doc: $0.013
- basic html: $0.050
- "rich" html with css+js+svg: up to $0.20

that's 15x more per request. at 100 requests/day you're looking at an extra $150-450/month

markdown also wins on version control, editability portability and speed. even thariq writes "it does take longer! html can take 2-4x longer than markdown”

but then he says "the results are worth it".

easy to say when you work at the company collecting the tokens