Web & SEO
What is llms.txt?
Llms.txt is a proposed convention for a plain text file at a site's root that gives AI systems a curated, readable map of the site's most useful content.
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Technical definition
The convention places a Markdown-formatted file at /llms.txt containing a short description of the site and an annotated list of links to its key pages. The intent is to give a language model a clean summary of a site without it having to crawl and strip navigation, scripts, and styling from every page.
It is a proposal rather than a ratified standard. Support across AI vendors is partial and changing, so any statement about which systems read it should be checked against current primary sources before publication.
In plain terms
It is a plain summary of your site, written for machines, sitting at a predictable address.
Robots.txt tells crawlers what they may not look at. llms.txt tells AI systems what is worth reading.
Why it matters
The honest position is that this is an early bet, not an established practice. Adoption is incomplete and the effect on citation rates is not well measured.
It is also close to free. The file is a few dozen lines of Markdown naming your main pages and what each is for, and it does not conflict with anything else you do. For a business already writing structured, definition-led content, adding one is a small step with a plausible upside. Do not expect it to substitute for the content itself, and do revisit it, since a stale map is worse than none.
