llms.txt
llms.txt: what it is, and whether you need one
A small file at the root of your site that tells AI models what you are. Worth twenty minutes of your time, worth nothing on a proposal, and useless if a crawler cannot reach you in the first place.
The free test
See what AI actually says about your business
We ask GPT-5, Claude and Gemini the exact question your next customer is about to type, live, while you watch. Then we tell you whether they named you, named a competitor, or had never heard of you.
Recent results
This is a real test, not a lead magnet with a generic PDF at the end. You see the actual answers the models gave, the businesses they named instead of you, and what on your own site is causing it.
llms.txt is a plain text file you put at the root of your website, at yourdomain.com/llms.txt, that tells AI models in readable English what your site is and which pages matter. It was proposed in 2024 by Jeremy Howard, and it is written in Markdown rather than the terse rule syntax of robots.txt.
We are going to give you the honest answer about it before the explanation, because most pages on this subject bury it.
No major AI company has confirmed they use llms.txt. Publishing one costs twenty minutes and might help later. Anyone charging you for it is charging for twenty minutes and a maybe.
What it is, and what it is not
The clearest way to understand it is against the file everyone already knows.
robots.txt
Permission
- Says who may crawl what
- Terse machine syntax, allow and disallow
- Universally supported, decades old
- Ignoring it is a breach of convention
- Affects whether you are read at all
llms.txt
Orientation
- Says what the site is and what matters on it
- Markdown, written for a reader
- Proposed 2024, adoption unconfirmed
- Ignoring it breaches nothing
- Affects how easily you are understood
So it is not a permissions file, it does not replace robots.txt, and it cannot unblock anything. If a crawler is being turned away, llms.txt is irrelevant, because nothing will be there to read it. Fix the blocking first.
Should you publish one?
Yes, with a clear head about why.
The case for: it takes twenty minutes once. It costs nothing to host. If adoption arrives, you are already there. And the exercise of writing one is quietly valuable on its own, because it forces you to say in plain English what your business does and which five pages actually matter, which is a question a surprising number of owners struggle with. We have watched that conversation improve a homepage more than the file ever will.
The case against paying for it: it is a text file. If it appears as a line item on a proposal at any meaningful price, you are being charged for a maybe. It is a reasonable thing for a developer to include while doing real work, and an unreasonable thing to be a deliverable of its own.
What it definitely will not do: make ChatGPT recommend you. It is orientation for a model that already found you and can already read you. If either of those is false, this file changes nothing.
A note on the door only helps if someone got as far as the door.
llms.txt is genuinely useful at the margin, and it is the single easiest thing on this site to sell to someone who does not know the order of operations. Reachable, then readable, then oriented. In that order, every time.
MISSING
Have you seen this business?
YOUR BUSINESS
Last seen: page 1 of Google
Never seen: ChatGPT · Gemini · Claude
Answers to: “who’s the best near me?”
How to write one
The format is Markdown. An H1 with your business name, a blockquote summarising what you do, then linked sections. For a local business it is short.
# Hartwell Plumbing > Licensed residential plumber serving Jupiter and > northern Palm Beach County, Florida. Family owned > since 2008. Emergency service available 24/7. ## Services - [Water heater repair and replacement](https://example.com/water-heaters): Tank and tankless, repair or full replacement, same day in most cases. - [Drain cleaning](https://example.com/drain-cleaning): Camera inspection and hydro jetting for residential lines. - [Repiping](https://example.com/repiping): Whole-home repipe for older Jupiter properties with failing copper. ## Service area - [Jupiter, FL](https://example.com/plumber-jupiter) - [Palm Beach Gardens, FL](https://example.com/plumber-palm-beach-gardens) ## Practical - [Pricing](https://example.com/pricing): Flat-rate call out, quoted before work. - [Contact](https://example.com/contact): (561) 555-0100, Mon-Sat 7am-7pm.
Three rules that matter more than the format:
- Every description must be specific. “Quality plumbing solutions” tells a model nothing it can act on. “Whole-home repipe for older Jupiter properties with failing copper” tells it exactly which question you are the answer to.
- Say the city, in words. This file is one of the few places where stating the obvious is the entire job.
- Only link pages that exist and are good. Pointing a model at a thin page is worse than not pointing at all. Five real pages beat twenty stubs.
Putting it live, and checking it
Upload it to the root of your site so it resolves at yourdomain.com/llms.txt, exactly like robots.txt. It must be served as plain text, not as an HTML page with your site's header wrapped around it, which is a mistake some site builders make automatically. Open the URL in a browser: you should see the raw Markdown and nothing else.
Our test checks for it as part of the technical teardown, alongside the checks that actually decide whether you get recommended. That ordering is deliberate. It is on the list because it belongs on the list, and it is near the bottom of the list because that is where it belongs.
Common questions
What is llms.txt?
A plain text file at the root of your site, at yourdomain.com/llms.txt, that tells AI models in readable English what the site is and which pages matter most.
It was proposed in 2024 by Jeremy Howard and is written in Markdown, rather than the terse allow and disallow syntax of robots.txt.
Do AI models actually read llms.txt?
No major AI company has publicly confirmed they use it. Adoption is unconfirmed, and that is the honest position; any page telling you otherwise is ahead of the evidence.
It is still worth publishing, because it takes twenty minutes once and costs nothing to host. Treat it as a cheap bet on the future rather than a fix for today.
Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?
No, and it does not replace it. robots.txt is a permissions file saying who may crawl what, in machine syntax, universally supported.
llms.txt is an orientation file saying what your site is, in Markdown, for a reader. If a crawler is blocked, llms.txt changes nothing, because nothing will be there to read it.
Should I pay someone to create an llms.txt file?
Not as a line item of its own. It is a text file that takes about twenty minutes to write, and adoption is still unconfirmed.
Perfectly reasonable for a developer to include while doing real work on your site. Not reasonable as a priced deliverable.
Will llms.txt make ChatGPT recommend my business?
On its own, no. It is orientation for a model that has already found you and can already read you.
If your site blocks crawlers, or if its content only appears once JavaScript has run, llms.txt changes nothing. Reachable first, readable second, oriented third.
Keep going
This one is near the bottom of the list on purpose. These are the ones nearer the top.