How to Export Claude Conversations to Markdown

Why Markdown is the right format for notes

Word and PDF are for documents you hand to someone else. If the destination is your own knowledge base — Obsidian, Notion, Logseq, a git repo — Markdown is the better target, because it stays editable, searchable and diffable forever.

It also happens to be the format Claude is already writing in. Claude composes its answers as Markdown and the browser renders them; exporting to Markdown just gives you back the source, so nothing has to be converted and nothing gets lost in translation.

This is why Markdown export is the one format TODOC keeps free with no daily cap for single messages — it is the cheapest operation of the set, and it is what most people archiving chats actually need.

Method 1: Export from inside Claude (recommended)

The extension adds an export button underneath each Claude reply, so the text never passes through your clipboard. That matters more than it sounds: copying by hand gives you the rendered HTML, while the extension reads the underlying Markdown.

1. Install the TODOC extension from the Chrome Web Store. It also runs in Edge, Brave and Arc.
2. Open claude.ai and go to the conversation you want to keep.
3. Click the export button under the reply, then choose Markdown.
4. The .md file downloads immediately — move it into your Obsidian vault or import it into Notion.

The same button also offers Word, PDF and Excel if you need a document rather than a note. Those formats count against the daily free allowance; Markdown on a single message does not.

Getting the file into Obsidian

Obsidian reads plain .md files from a folder, so there is no import step — you just put the file where the vault can see it.

1. Find your vault folder on disk (Settings → About → Override config folder shows the path if you are unsure).
2. Drop the exported .md file into the vault, or into a subfolder like "AI chats".
3. Obsidian picks it up on its own. Code blocks keep their language tags, so syntax highlighting works right away.

If you use frontmatter

Some people keep YAML frontmatter at the top of every note for tags and dates. The export does not write frontmatter for you, so add it in your editor afterwards, or use an Obsidian template that prepends it on paste. A short block like a title, a date and a source tag is usually enough to make the note findable later.

Getting the file into Notion

Notion imports Markdown natively, but it flattens a few things, so it is worth knowing what to expect.

1. In Notion, open the page you want the chat to live under.
2. Use Import in the sidebar, choose "Text & Markdown", and select the .md file.
3. Notion creates a new page using the first heading as the title.

Headings, lists, tables and code blocks come across cleanly. LaTeX is the one thing to watch: Notion needs equations in its own block type, so inline math may arrive as literal text and need one manual conversion. If the conversation is formula-heavy, exporting to Word instead will preserve the equations as editable objects.

What survives the export

Code blocks

Indentation, line breaks and the language tag are all preserved. Since Claude is heavily used for code, this is usually the part that matters most — and it is exactly what hand-copying tends to destroy.

Tables

Markdown tables come out as Markdown tables. Obsidian renders them directly; Notion converts them into its own table blocks on import.

Math

LaTeX is kept as LaTeX in the .md file. Obsidian renders it natively. Notion needs the manual step described above. If you want equations that are editable inside a document rather than rendered in a note app, Word is the better target.

Archiving many conversations at once

If you are clearing out a project rather than saving one answer, use batch mode instead of repeating this by hand.

1. Open the extension panel on claude.ai and switch to batch mode.
2. Wait for the conversation list to finish loading before you select anything.
3. Select the conversations you want, or select all.
4. Choose a format and start the export.

Batch export is not covered by the free single-message Markdown allowance — it counts against the daily limit like any other export. Selecting before the list finishes loading is also the most common mistake: you only get what had loaded at that moment.