Add a hyperlink on every page for an LLM-friendly version of that page

[leecalcote]

Current Behavior

Every page on docs.layer5.io renders only as styled HTML. There is no way for a reader (human or LLM/agent) to get a clean, LLM-friendly version of a page's content - e.g. raw Markdown, or plain text stripped of navigation, sidebars, footers, and other chrome. Anyone (or any tool) that wants to feed a page into an LLM today has to scrape and manually clean the rendered HTML, which is brittle and wastes context/tokens on non-content markup.

This is a increasingly common pattern on modern documentation sites (e.g. "Copy page", "View as Markdown", "Open in ChatGPT" links, and the emerging llms.txt convention) that make docs directly consumable by AI tools and agent workflows.

Desired Behavior

Every page should expose a hyperlink (e.g. near the page title or in a page-actions menu) that links to, or produces, an LLM-friendly version of that page - clean Markdown or plain text with navigation chrome, styling, and site scaffolding stripped out, keeping only the substantive page content (headings, body text, code blocks, tables, links).

Sourcing requirement (must be satisfied in this order):

1. Investigate upstream first. Before building anything custom, determine whether this capability already exists in either:

   • Hugo core (e.g. built-in output formats such as Markdown/plain-text output formats, .Plain/.PlainWords, or any first-class "alternate representation" mechanism), or
   • The Docsy theme (github.com/google/docsy, currently pinned at v0.14.3 in go.mod) - check its layouts/partials, release notes, and open/closed issues and PRs for an existing or in-progress "LLM-friendly page" / "copy as Markdown" / llms.txt feature.

   Document findings (with links to the relevant Hugo docs, Docsy source, issues, or PRs) directly in this issue or in the linked PR.

2. Only if neither Hugo nor Docsy already provides this (natively or via a documented, supported extension point we can adopt) should a new, site-specific capability be built in this repo (e.g. via a custom Hugo output format targeting Markdown, a custom partial/shortcode, or a build-time export step that publishes a .md/.txt sibling for every page and links to it).

Either way, the resulting capability must:

• Apply automatically to every content page (no per-page manual opt-in).
• Produce output that is genuinely clean for LLM consumption - no nav/sidebar/footer/ads, but preserving heading structure, code fences, and links.
• Be discoverable via a visible hyperlink on the page itself (not only via a hidden/undocumented URL convention).

Implementation

• Research spike: check Hugo's built-in output formats (outputFormats in hugo.toml/config.yaml) for a Markdown/plain-text option, and audit the Docsy theme (layouts, partials, changelog) for any existing "LLM-friendly" or "copy as Markdown" feature or open proposal upstream.
• If a Hugo output-format approach is viable, add a custom outputFormat (e.g. text/markdown at <page>/index.md) and surface a link to it from the page layout/partial.
• If theme-level changes are the right fix, evaluate contributing upstream to Docsy rather than diverging locally.
• Consider alignment with the emerging llms.txt convention for site-wide discoverability in addition to the per-page link.

Acceptance Tests

• This issue (or the linked PR) documents whether Hugo core and/or the Docsy theme already provide this capability, with supporting links/evidence.
• Every rendered content page includes a visible hyperlink to an LLM-friendly (Markdown or plain-text) version of that page.
• The LLM-friendly version excludes site navigation, sidebar, footer, and other non-content chrome, and preserves headings, code blocks, tables, and links.
• The capability is sourced from upstream Hugo/Docsy if available there; a net-new custom implementation is added only if it is not.
• Solution is documented in the repo's contributor docs (e.g. CONTRIBUTING.md or a design doc under docs/) so future page templates/authors keep it working.

Mockups

N/A - open to a small icon/link (e.g. "View as Markdown") placed near the existing page-edit/feedback links in the page header or footer.

---

Contributor Guide and Resources

• 📚 Instructions for contributing to documentation
  • Layer5 documentation site and source
• 🎨 Wireframes and designs for Layer5 site in Figma (open invite)
• 🙋🏾🙋🏼 Questions: Layer5 Discussion Forum and Layer5 Community Slack