---
summary: "Markdown formatting pipeline for outbound channels"
read_when:
  - You are changing markdown formatting or chunking for outbound channels
  - You are adding a new channel formatter or style mapping
---
# Markdown formatting

Clawdbot formats outbound Markdown by converting it into a shared intermediate
representation (IR) before rendering channel-specific output.

## Pipeline

1. **Parse Markdown -> IR**
   - IR is plain text plus style spans (bold/italic/strike/code/spoiler) and link spans.
   - Offsets are UTF-16 code units so Signal style ranges align with its API.
2. **Chunk IR (format-first)**
   - Chunking happens on the IR text before rendering.
   - Inline formatting does not split across chunks; spans are sliced per chunk.
3. **Render per channel**
   - **Slack:** mrkdwn tokens (bold/italic/strike/code), links as `<url|label>`.
   - **Telegram:** HTML tags (`<b>`, `<i>`, `<s>`, `<code>`, `<pre><code>`, `<a href>`).
   - **Signal:** plain text + `text-style` ranges; links become `label (url)` when label differs.

## Link policy

- **Slack:** `[label](url)` -> `<url|label>`; bare URLs are left as-is.
- **Telegram:** `[label](url)` -> `<a href="url">label</a>` (HTML parse mode).
- **Signal:** `[label](url)` -> `label (url)` unless label matches url.

## Spoilers

Spoiler markers (`||spoiler||`) are parsed only for Signal, where they map to
SPOILER style ranges. Other channels treat them as plain text.