Moltworker (for OpenClaw) & Markdown for Agents: Running AI on Cloudflare

In this episode, host João Tomé is joined by Celso Martinho, VP of Engineering at Cloudflare, to discuss two major launches: Markdown for Agents and Moltworker (for OpenClaw) — and what they signal about the future of AI agents on the Internet.

Celso explains how Markdown for Agents was conceived, built, and shipped in just one week, why AI systems prefer markdown over HTML, and how converting a typical blog post from 16,000 HTML tokens to roughly 3,000 markdown tokens can reduce cost, improve speed, and increase accuracy for AI models. We also explore Moltworker, a proof-of-concept showing how a personal AI agent originally designed to run on a Mac Mini can instead run on Cloudflare’s global network using Workers, R2, Browser Rendering, AI Gateway, and Zero Trust.

We discuss observability for AI crawlers, new monetization models for publishers, the rapid growth of agent ecosystems, and why AI is becoming less hype and more infrastructure.

Mentioned blog posts:

• Introducing Markdown for Agents
• Introducing Moltworker: a self-hosted personal AI agent, minus the minis

⏱️ Timestamps

1:15 — Introducing Markdown for Agents

1:46 — From idea to ship in one week

2:37 — Why AI systems prefer markdown over HTML

3:30 — HTML “packaging” vs semantic content

4:39 — How Cloudflare converts HTML to markdown in real time

5:19 — Token savings: 16,000 vs 3,000 tokens

6:29 — Context windows, cost, and AI efficiency

8:21 — Tracking markdown trends in Cloudflare Radar

9:05 — Live demo: content negotiation header with curl

11:07 — AI projects in Lisbon: AI Search, PaperCrawl, and more

12:36 — Observability and new monetization models for publishers

13:56 — What is OpenClaw and why it went viral

14:54 — From Hacker News to Cloudflare in hours

17:06 — Running OpenClaw on Cloudflare instead of a Mac Mini

18:05 — Why this is a proof of concept (not a product)

20:06 — Architecture: Zero Trust, Workers, R2, Browser Rendering, AI Gateway

22:32 — Demo: AI agent records and posts a video automatically

24:53 — 10,000 GitHub stars and open source support

26:11 — AI in 2026: intensifying work, not replacing it