Markdown and Agent Discovery

Vercel documentation is available as HTML for humans and structured Markdown for AI agents. Vercel combines content negotiation, explicit Markdown URLs, discovery indexes, and a cross-site link graph so agents can find the right page and understand how it connects to related content.

A canonical docs URL such as https://vercel.com/docs/functions returns HTML to an ordinary browser request. The same URL returns text/markdown when the request prefers Markdown, or when Vercel detects an AI agent without a format preference.

Vercel honors explicit format preferences. A recognized AI agent receives HTML when it requests text/html. When the agent does not distinguish between HTML and Markdown, Vercel returns Markdown.

To request Markdown from the canonical URL, send the Accept header:

curl --header "Accept: text/markdown" https://vercel.com/docs/functions

Every Markdown response sets the Vary: Accept header. The Vercel CDN includes Accept in its cache key, and the header lets browser, agent-side, and third-party intermediary caches store the HTML and Markdown versions of a page separately.

Append .md to any documentation URL to get an explicit Markdown URL for that page:

• HTML: https://vercel.com/docs/functions
• Markdown: https://vercel.com/docs/functions.md

The .md URL is durable and shareable. Use it in saved prompts, project rules, scripts, or other tools that need to request Markdown directly.

curl https://vercel.com/docs/functions.md

Both curl commands return the Vercel Functions page as Markdown.

Each Markdown response starts with YAML frontmatter with these fields:

The response body preserves headings, links, fenced code blocks, and tables. When the docs graph has curated links for the page, the Markdown response also includes a Related pages section after the introduction.

Each HTML page advertises its Markdown version in a rel="alternate" link with the text/markdown content type. It also advertises the page's .graph.md cross-link map.

Vercel builds a nightly cross-link graph across Vercel docs, the Vercel Knowledge Base, nextjs.org, ai-sdk.dev, and other Vercel documentation sites. The graph helps agents move beyond one page and find supporting context across the documentation estate.

The docs cross-link graph maps relationships between documentation pages. The Vercel Plugin ecosystem knowledge graph is separate and maps relationships between Vercel products.

/docs/graph.json contains the complete graph. Each page entry includes its title, summary, outbound and inbound links, semantic neighbors, curated related pages, and prerequisites when available.

The graph rebuilds nightly. Check its builtAt value before using it when freshness matters.

Append .graph.md to a page URL for a smaller cross-link map designed for agent tools. For example, /docs/functions.graph.md includes:

• Semantically closest pages
• Prerequisites, when available
• Pages that the source page links to
• Pages that link to the source page, grouped by site

Each .graph.md response contains the page's complete set of relationships, and section headings include the link count. The header of every response links to /docs/graph.json and states when the graph was built. Pages that are newer than the last nightly build return a 200 response explaining that no cross-link map exists yet.

Agents can use these files to discover Vercel documentation, the REST API, and other machine-readable resources:

Every docs page has a Copy page button at the top of the content. Click the button to copy the page as Markdown to your clipboard, or open its menu for more options:

• Copy page copies the page as Markdown to your clipboard so you can paste it into an AI assistant.
• View as Markdown opens the page's durable .md URL in a new tab so you can view or share its Markdown representation.
• Open in v0 and Ask AI about this page send the page to an AI assistant as context.
• OpenAPI Specification appears on REST API reference pages and opens the API's OpenAPI description.

When you need help with a specific feature, copy that page's Markdown or fetch its .md URL, then include the content in your prompt:

Here is the Vercel Functions documentation:

[paste markdown content]

Based on this, how do I set up a function with a 60 second timeout?

For tasks that span multiple features, combine the relevant pages:

I need to deploy a Next.js app with custom domains. Here is the relevant documentation:

## Deploying
[paste deploying.md]

## Custom Domains
[paste domains.md]

Help me set this up step by step.

In tools like Cursor, add .md documentation URLs to your project rules so the AI can load the relevant Vercel documentation.