What Is llms.txt, and Does Your Website Need One?

Short answer: llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website — yoursite.com/llms.txt — that tells AI models, in a few paragraphs and a list of links, what the site is, what the business offers and which pages matter. Think of it as a sitemap written for language models instead of crawlers.

Where it came from

The format was proposed in 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI. The problem it addresses is real: modern websites are full of navigation, scripts and layout that make it hard for a model to find the actual facts. A short Markdown file removes the noise.

What goes in one

• A heading with the business name.
• A one-paragraph summary — what you do, where, and for whom.
• The facts you want repeated accurately: services, prices, service areas, contact.
• A list of key pages, each with a one-line description.
• Optionally, a companion llms-full.txt with the full text of the most important content in one file.

You can read the one on this site at georgemoreas.com/llms.txt, and the long version at /llms-full.txt.

Do AI engines actually read it?

Honestly: it is a proposal, not a standard, and the major AI companies have not publicly committed to using it in ranking or retrieval. Some AI tools and coding assistants do fetch it, and it costs almost nothing to publish. The right way to think about it is as cheap insurance, not a silver bullet.

What matters more than llms.txt

If an AI crawler cannot read your site at all, no text file will save you. In order of impact:

• robots.txt that allows GPTBot, OAI-SearchBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot and Google-Extended. Plenty of sites block them by accident.
• Server-rendered content, so the words exist in the HTML rather than only after JavaScript runs.
• Schema markup stating your business, services, prices and reviews.
• Consistent facts across your site, Google Business Profile and directories.
• Then llms.txt, as the summary on top.

Should your business have one?

Yes — it takes minutes, it cannot hurt, and it forces you to write down in one paragraph what your business does, which is useful on its own. Every site I build ships with llms.txt, llms-full.txt, an AI-friendly robots.txt and full schema markup as part of thebuild. More terms like this are in the glossary.