llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed file format that gives large language models a curated, Markdown overview of a website's most important content.
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a proposed standard for a Markdown file placed at the root of a website (for example example.com/llms.txt). It was suggested in 2024 by Jeremy Howard as a way to give large language models a short, curated overview of a site: what the company does and links to its most important pages, in a format that is easy for AI systems to read.
It is often compared to robots.txt and XML sitemaps, but it works differently: robots.txt tells crawlers what they may access, a sitemap lists URLs for search engines, and llms.txt is a voluntary summary for AI tools.
How much it matters today is debated:
- Google has said it does not use llms.txt and that no special files are needed to appear in its AI features such as AI Overviews.
- None of the major AI search providers has confirmed that it uses the file to select or cite sources, and adoption across websites is still low.
- It is most useful for documentation sites and developer tools, where users feed pages into AI assistants themselves.
Our view: llms.txt is cheap to add and does no harm, but it is no substitute for the fundamentals that actually drive AI citations – indexable content, clear structure, structured data and access for AI crawlers.