Why do Claude and other models wrap output in XML tags?

Anthropic recommends XML tags such as thinking and answer to separate a model's private reasoning from its final response. Other prompt frameworks use tags like context, document or scratchpad for the same structuring purpose. They are convenient for the model but usually need to be removed before showing text to an end user.

Does this handle nested tags?

Yes. The stripper walks the text and matches each opening tag with its corresponding closing tag, so a thinking block that itself contains an example tag is handled correctly. Extraction returns the full inner content including any nested tags.

What is the difference between removing tags and removing their contents?

Removing only the tags keeps the inner text but deletes the angle-bracket markers. Removing tags and contents deletes the entire block — useful for stripping a thinking section the user should never see.

Is my text sent to a server?

No. All parsing runs locally in your browser with JavaScript. Nothing you paste is uploaded, logged or stored, so it is safe to use with confidential prompts and completions.

What happens to text outside the targeted tags?

It is left untouched. Only the tags you name (or all tags, if you leave the field blank) are affected, so surrounding prose, markdown and code remain exactly as written.

LLM XML Tag Stripper

LLM responses are often littered with XML-style structure — <thinking>, <answer>, <context>, <scratchpad> and any custom tag your prompt asked for. This tool strips or extracts that structure so you get either clean user-facing text or just the inner content you actually want.

How it works

You paste a response and name the tags. The parser scans the text for matching <tag>...</tag> pairs, correctly matching nested opening and closing tags, and then applies your chosen action:

Strip tags only — keep the inner text, delete the angle-bracket markers.
Strip tags and contents — delete the whole block, including everything inside.
Extract contents — return only the inner text of matching tags, discarding everything else.

Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, so confidential prompts stay private.

Tips and examples

A common workflow with Claude is to ask for <thinking> reasoning followed by an <answer>. To show only the answer to your users, set the action to Extract and the tag to answer. To hide the reasoning but keep everything else, set the action to Strip tags and contents and the tag to thinking. Leave the tag field blank to act on every tag the tool detects — handy for a quick cleanup pass before logging or displaying a completion.