llms.txt is an emerging convention: a plain-text file at the root of your site that gives AI assistants a concise, structured summary of what you do and which pages matter. Think of it as a sitemap written for a reader rather than a crawler.
It is not an official standard and no assistant is obliged to read it. It costs an hour, and the exercise of writing one is worth it regardless.
- 1
Create the file at your site root
It must be reachable at yourdomain.com/llms.txt and served as plain text. On most platforms that means a file in the public folder; on a framework it may be a small route that generates it. Markdown formatting inside a plain-text file is the convention.
- 2
Open with the name and a one-line summary
Start with an H1 of your business name, then a blockquote giving one sentence on what you do and for whom. This is the part most likely to be read and reused wholesale, so make it accurate and specific rather than aspirational.
- 3
Add a short factual paragraph
Two or three sentences covering what you do, where you are based, and the area you serve. Plain declarative statements. This is not the place for a value proposition — an assistant needs facts it can repeat without embarrassment.
- 4
List your key pages with descriptions
Group under headings — services, guides, case studies. Each entry is a Markdown link followed by a colon and one sentence on what the page covers. The description matters as much as the link, because it is how an assistant decides which page answers a question.
- 5
Include your genuinely useful content
Guides, how-tos and substantial articles belong here. Thin pages and thin listings do not. This is a curated list of what would actually help someone, not a full inventory — a file listing four hundred pages is a sitemap and no more useful than one.
- 6
Finish with contact details
Email, location, website, main social profile. Assistants are frequently asked how to get in touch with a business, and this makes the answer unambiguous rather than something to be inferred from a contact page.
- 7
Generate it rather than maintaining it by hand
If your site has a content management system, build the file from live content so new pages appear automatically. A hand-written llms.txt is accurate for about a month. If it must be manual, put a recurring reminder in the calendar.
Keep it in step with robots.txt
Make sure your robots.txt does not block the AI crawlers you want reading the site, and consider adding a comment there pointing at your llms.txt. There is no directive for it, but robots.txt is one of the first files an agent fetches.
Managing expectations
No assistant currently guarantees it reads llms.txt, and it will not rescue a site with nothing worth citing. It is a cheap, low-risk addition that makes your content easier to use correctly — not a ranking mechanism.
Frequently asked questions
No. It is a community convention that has gained traction, not something published by a standards body or required by any AI provider. Treat it as low-cost and optional.
Would rather we did it?
These guides are here so you can do it yourself. If you would rather hand it over, that is what we do.
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