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Pamela Chia 164de2c347 feat(www): markdown 404 for markdown-negotiated paths (#49596)
Nonexistent paths return a real 404 everywhere, but always with an HTML
body, even when the client asked for markdown via `Accept:
text/markdown` or a `.md` suffix. Middleware can't fix this: it gates on
a static slug allowlist and can't know a path will 404. I added two
`fallback` rewrites (`.md` suffix; Accept header containing
`text/markdown` or `text/*`) that run only after every route has failed
to match and route the request to a small `md-404` handler returning a
short markdown 404 pointing at /docs, /sitemap.xml, and /llms.txt. Real
pages are structurally unaffected.

**Note:** `lib/rewrites.js` is untouched (the plain rewrites array
became the `afterFiles` phase), so #49587 merges independently. I
updated next.config.test.ts's rewrites assertion for the phased shape;
it now also pins the two fallback rules.

## To test

I verified on the Vercel preview:
- [x] `curl -s -D - -H "Accept: text/markdown"
<preview>/definitely-not-a-page` (404, `Content-Type: text/markdown`,
body with the three pointers)
- [x] Same URL with a browser Accept header (existing HTML 404,
unchanged)
- [x] `curl -s -D - <preview>/definitely-not-a-page.md` (markdown 404)
- [x] `curl -s -D - -H "Accept: text/markdown" <preview>/auth` (200
markdown, unchanged) and `<preview>/support` (200 HTML, unchanged)
- [x] `/homepage.md` still 308s to `/index.md` (redirects phase wins);
`Accept: text/*` gets the markdown 404, matching real-page negotiation

Known boundary: `/changelog/<unknown>` keeps the HTML 404 body
(pages-router `fallback: 'blocking'` routes take priority over fallback
rewrites per Next docs); the status is still 404, verified on the
preview.

## Linear
- fixes GROWTH-1142


<!-- This is an auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai
-->
## Summary by CodeRabbit

- **New Features**
- Added Markdown-formatted 404 responses for unmatched documentation and
`.md` page requests.
  - Included helpful documentation links in not-found responses.
- Requests that explicitly accept Markdown now receive a consistent
Markdown response.
- Added appropriate response headers for security, caching, and content
variation.

- **Bug Fixes**
- Improved routing for unmatched Markdown paths, ensuring they are
handled by the appropriate not-found response instead of returning an
unexpected format.
<!-- end of auto-generated comment: release notes by coderabbit.ai -->
2026-08-27 13:29:04 +10:00
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2026-06-18 18:58:27 +01:00