Guide
What is llms.txt?
llms.txt is a plain-text file that lives at the root of your website, at yoursite.com/llms.txt, and gives AI systems a short menu of what the site is and where the important pages are. Think of it as the one page you would hand a new assistant on their first morning: who you are, what you do, where to look. It was proposed in September 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI, and the specification lives at llmstxt.org.
Why does a website need a menu for AI?
Because a language model reading your home page has to work through navigation, cookie notices, image carousels and a footer full of legal text to find the 3 sentences that matter. Web pages are built for people with eyes; llms.txt is built for something that reads. The proposal describes the file as
brief background information and guidance, along with links to markdown files providing more detailed information.
You already have two files like this for machines. robots.txt tells crawlers what they may fetch, and has for over 30 years. sitemap.xml lists every page. llms.txt is the third: not permissions, not a list, but a summary written for a reader that understands English.
Who actually reads it?
Honestly, adoption is early and uneven. Some AI tools fetch it directly; many do not yet. That is not a reason to skip it. The file costs about 20 minutes, it is one of the checks in the AI Signals category because it is the single clearest signal that a site was prepared for AI readers, and the sites that have one are still rare enough that having one stands out. Google’s own rich-results tooling has begun acknowledging it, which is usually how these things go from optional to expected.
What does a good llms.txt look like?
The format is Markdown with a fixed order. The first line is a heading with the site name, then a blockquote with a one-paragraph summary, then sections of links with a short description after each. Here is a template for an agent site. Replace the bracketed parts and keep the shape:
# [Your Name], [City] Real Estate Agent
> [Your Name] is a licensed real estate agent with [Brokerage] serving
> [City] and [nearby areas] in [State]. License [number]. [One sentence
> on what you specialize in.]
## About
- [About [Your Name]](https://yoursite.com/about/): background, license, brokerage
- [Contact](https://yoursite.com/contact/): phone, email, office address
## Communities
- [[Neighborhood one]](https://yoursite.com/communities/one/): prices, schools, commute
- [[Neighborhood two]](https://yoursite.com/communities/two/): prices, schools, commute
## Optional
- [Blog](https://yoursite.com/blog/): market updates and buyer guides
A few rules of thumb. Keep it under 1 page. Use full addresses starting with https. Describe each link in plain words, the way you would to a person. Update it when you add a community page. If you want to go further, llms-full.txt is a companion file that carries the complete text of your key pages so a model never has to fetch them one by one; this site publishes both, and you can read ours at /llms.txt.
How do I add it to my website?
- WordPress: several small plugins generate one, or upload the file to the site root with the same file manager you use for robots.txt. Check that yoursite.com/llms.txt returns the text, not a styled 404 page.
- Squarespace, Wix and most brokerage platforms: many cannot serve a root-level text file at all. Ask support; if the answer is no, that is worth knowing about your platform.
- Custom or hosted sites: it is a text file. Put it next to robots.txt and you are done in 5 minutes.
How do I know it worked?
Open yoursite.com/llms.txt in a browser. You should see your text, starting with the heading line. If you see your home page or an error page instead, the file is not being served. The checker reads it the same way and reports whether it exists, whether it starts with a heading, and how many sections and links it found, so a re-check after you add it shows the change as a number in under 60 seconds.