I am writing to report a frustrating HTML parsing issue when creating or updating Help Center Articles via the API (including version 2.15 and others).
Problem Description: When uploading an article's <body> HTML that does not contain an <h1> tag but starts with an <h2> (or <h3>), the Intercom HTML Sanitizer / Block Converter forcefully promotes the highest-level heading to an <h1>.
Steps to Reproduce:
-
Use the Article API to create/update an article.
-
Pass the following HTML payload for the body:
<h2>Introduction</h2><p>Some text here.</p> -
Check the rendered article in the Intercom Help Center or within the Intercom Article Block Editor.
Current Behavior: The parser automatically converts the <h2> tag into an <h1>. Because the Help Center template already renders the Article Title as the primary <h1> (or visual equivalent), the final published page ends up with two <H1> tags.
Business & Technical Impact:
-
SEO Penalty: Multiple H1 tags on a single page violate fundamental SEO best practices, negatively impacting the search ranking of our Help Center.
-
Accessibility (a11y): Screen readers rely on a strict semantic hierarchy. A forced, duplicate H1 breaks the expected document structure for visually impaired users.
-
Migration Friction: We are forced to inject zero-width spaces (
<h1>​</h1>) at the top of our payloads just to bypass your parser and preserve our original<h2>tags.
Feature Request: Could the engineering team consider either:
-
Respecting the original HTML semantic hierarchy when no H1 is provided in the payload (leaving H2 as H2).
-
Introducing a parameter in the API payload (e.g.,
disable_heading_promotion: true) to bypass the automatic Block Editor restructuring.
Thank you for looking into this core API behavior.