[FEATURE] Chat and Cowork - Plain text prompt input vs markdown rendered prompt input

Preflight Checklist

• [x] I have searched existing requests and this feature hasn't been requested yet
• [x] This is a single feature request (not multiple features)

Problem Statement

• Currently, in the Claude desktop app, when you enter a prompt, your text is rendered to markdown automatically while you are typing.

• It would be nice if one had an option to enter plain text into the prompt text box, or even a simple tabbed input text box with two tabs, Write/Plain Text and Preview/Rendered, similar to the text box I'm using right now here in GitHub, to write this feature request.

Proposed Solution

1. Enhance the prompt input text box in the Claude desktop app so that it has two tabs, Plain Text and Rendered.

• As an example of a similar implementation of this idea, would be the Write and Preview tabs in the Issue dialog text boxes that are used in GitHub to write features, issues, etc.
• The differences would be that both the Plain Text and Rendered tabs would both be editable. The Rendered tab would basically be just the exact markdown auto-rendered prompt input text box currently offered.
• With this two-tab approach, one could quickly and easily flip between a plain-text view of their prompt and a markdown rendered view, with both editable.

1. By default, a new prompt box opens on the Plain Text tab.

1. Stretch goal: A setting in Settings, to specify whether a prompt window opens on the Plain Text tab, or the Rendered tab.

Notes

• The names of the tabs could be something other than Plain Text and Rendered. I just chose those two names, since Write and Preview imply that only the plain-text tab would be editable, and the rendered markdown tab would be view-only.
• Names for the tabs would need to be selected that indicate;
• Both tabs are editable.
• But one tab is plain text, and the other is markdown auto-rendered.

Alternative Solutions

Alternative Solution 1

• Whenever a prompt is more than a simple one sentence or single unstructured paragraph, I will typically use an external editor like VS Code with markdown preview, or a web-based markdown editor like markdownlivepreview dot com, for example. And then I copy and paste the prompt from there into the Claude desktop app prompt text box.

• It is the extra step required to write prompts in an external editor and then copy and paste them into the Claude app that motivates me to make this request.

Alternative Solution 2

• I do this for Claude Code specifically. It doesn't translate to Chat and Cowork that well. But it works okay in Claude Code. I leave a file in the repository called prompt.md, which is always open in VS Code. Then I can easily type out complex prompts with all the features of a code editor, plus a quick side-by-side markdown preview. And then I have created a slash-command called /p which I can use as a quick pseudo-enter, which then reads prompt.md. This works really well in Claude Code.

• Note: Claude Code in the terminal is plain-text, but I still use an external editor, just because it's easier to edit large, complex prompts in a full-featured editor than it is in the Claude Code terminal, even though it is plain text.

Priority

Low - Nice to have

Feature Category

Other

Use Case Example

A typical example would be where you need to write larger, more structured prompts with multiple sections, like ## Role, ## Context, ## Style and Format, ## Instruction, sections, possibly also including bullets, hierarchically structured bullets, and numbered lists, and perhaps some sub-level hash-headings, etc. Basically, anywhere one wants to format a prompt with a lot of structure, in particular, a hierarchical structure. That is where being able to write out a markdown-formatted prompt in plain text can be quite convenient.

Additional Context

N/A - I think everything I wrote above about covers it. 👍