The British nonprofit organization The Chancery Lane Project has released a new open-source plugin for WordPress that could significantly reduce the cost and energy used when AI agents crawl websites. The tool, called WordPress Markdown for Agents, provides simplified Markdown versions of web pages. It removes scripts, navigation, and formatting that machines do not need.
By shrinking pages by around 80%, it could drastically reduce data traffic and token usage. Early tests show savings of up to 90%. If the tool sees wider adoption across WordPress websites, estimates suggest annual savings of 17.8 billion gigabytes and 14.4 billion kilowatt-hours.