Feature: "Copy as Markdown" for page and section content

[schickling]

Title

Feature: Copy as Markdown for page and section content

Summary

• Add an optional "Copy as Markdown" action that copies either:
  • the entire page, or
  • the current section (from the focused heading to the next same-level heading).
• Goal: make it effortless to share docs context with AI assistants, agentic coding tools, and issue trackers while preserving Markdown semantics.

Motivation

• This is becoming a common pattern on modern docs sites. The Anthropic docs (https://docs.anthropic.com/) are a good example of AI-friendly documentation with strong copy interactions geared for downstream tooling.
• Starlight already provides copy buttons for code blocks via Expressive Code; extending this to page/section content unlocks high‑value AI and agent workflows.

Edge Cases

• Interactive/MDX-only components: degrade gracefully with best-effort Markdown.
• Image/asset paths: preserve relative URLs by default; allow an option to absolutize links.
• Tables/admonitions: ensure readable, portable Markdown output.

Configuration (example)

// starlight.config.ts
export default defineConfig({
  // ...
  copyMarkdown: {
    enabled: true,
    scope: 'both', // 'page' | 'section' | 'both'
    includeFrontmatter: false,
    linkStyle: 'inline', // 'inline' | 'reference'
    implementation: 'html-to-md', // 'html-to-md' | 'static-asset'
  },
})

Prior Art

• AI-friendly documentation patterns seen across modern docs; Anthropic docs as a notable example (https://docs.anthropic.com/).

Request

• Would this belong in core Starlight or as an official plugin?
• If the direction sounds good, I’m happy to help with an initial prototype/PR.

Screenshots / examples

• Anthropic docs:

  

• zod.dev refinements section:

  

[HiDeoo]

Thanks for the feedback 🙌

We definitely encourage a plugin approach for this kind of feature and it turns out there is already a plugin for such functionality: https://github.com/corsfix/starlight-contextual-menu

A live example is also available here.

[schickling]

That's great to hear. Thanks a lot for sharing this. Wonderful news!