Fix markdown 500s and make valuation headlines crawlable

[0thernet]

The live site still has a P0 markdown failure: Accept: text/markdown on / returns HTTP 500. The prerendered HTML for / and /history/* also started with a Suspense loading shell (Loading Stripe company history…).

This revision keeps that markdown fix and the SSR lists. It does not invent per-event routes. The primary organic artifact is /history/valuation: a visible H1, a 2–4 sentence answer lead, and an HTML <table> of yearly valuation headlines with basis, status, and YAML source links. CollectionPage/ItemList JSON-LD matches those visible rows.

The sourced corpus is unchanged. The site stays independent of Stripe, Inc.

Markdown 500 (P0)

The proxy was calling markdownForPath() → loadHistory() → node:fs. On Vercel that function has no YAML corpus, so every markdown Accept request failed.

The proxy now only negotiates Accept and rewrites to a Node route handler at /x-markdown/**. That path is noindexed, disallowed in robots, and omitted from the sitemap. The public URL stays /, /about, /history/valuation, etc.

Before (production)

$ curl -sS -D- -o /tmp/out -H 'Accept: text/markdown' https://stripedex.com/ | head
HTTP/2 500
vary: Accept
...
Internal Server Error

After (bun run build && bun run start, localhost)

$ curl -sS -D- -H 'Accept: text/markdown' http://127.0.0.1:3010/
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
content-type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8
Vary: Accept, ...

# Stripe Company History: 273 Sourced Events

> An independent, sourced timeline of Stripe acquisitions, products, leadership, funding, valuation, expansion, offices, publishing, company milestones, and annual volume.

stripedex.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Stripe, Inc.

$ curl -sS -D- -H 'Accept: text/markdown' http://127.0.0.1:3010/this-does-not-exist
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
content-type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8

# Page not found
- [Sitemap](https://stripedex.com/sitemap.xml)
- [Agent index (llms.txt)](https://stripedex.com/llms.txt)

Valuation headlines (preferred organic artifact)

No-JS Googlebot HTML for /history/valuation:

<h1 class="history-page-title" id="valuation-page-heading">Stripe Valuation History by Year, 2011–2026</h1>

<p class="history-volume-intro">Stripe’s latest sourced private-company valuation headline is $159 billion in 2026, from a company tender with agreements signed status, recorded as transaction implied. This page selects one observation per year from 2011–2026. Financing, tender, 409A, secondary, and market-indication figures are not interchangeable. stripedex.com is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Stripe, Inc. …</p>

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th scope="col">year</th>
      <th scope="col">valuation</th>
      <th scope="col">basis</th>
      <th scope="col">status</th>
      <th scope="col">sources</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <tr id="valuation-2026-02-employee-tender">
      <th scope="row">2026</th>
      <td>$159 billion</td>
      <td>transaction implied</td>
      <td>agreements signed</td>
      <td><a href="https://stripe.com/newsroom/news/stripe-2025-update">Stripe</a></td>
    </tr>
  </tbody>
</table>

JSON-LD ItemList has numberOfItems: 14 and the same fragment URLs as the table rows (/history/valuation#valuation-2011-03-seed, … #valuation-2026-02-employee-tender).

Per-event /history/<category>/<event-id> pages from the previous revision are removed. Home and category lists stay on # fragments. sitemap.xml lists only the durable document routes.

SSR home and category lists

Removed app/loading.tsx. Googlebot on local / and /history/acquisitions:

loading count: 0
home events: 273
acquisitions events: 32
event path /history/acquisitions/openrouter-…: absent

First <main> is the real timeline, not “Loading Stripe company history…”.

Verification

• bun run check (typecheck, lint, 155 tests)
• bun run build prerenders category, volume, valuation, and markdown handler routes (no per-event pages)
• Local curls above for markdown 200 on / and the valuation <table> in no-JS HTML

  

[vercel]

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Project	Deployment	Actions	Updated (UTC)
stripedex	Ready	Preview	Aug 22, 2026 4:13pm