What is llms.txt?

The llms.txt proposal, published in 2024, suggests placing a plain Markdown file at /llms.txt that summarizes what a website is about and links to its key pages. The idea is to give language models a clean, compact overview instead of making them parse complex HTML, navigation, and scripts.

llms.txt is not an official web standard, and it is not the same as robots.txt. It does not control crawler access, and support among major AI providers is limited and inconsistent. Some tools and documentation sites have adopted it, but there is no assurance that a given AI system reads or uses it.

For a small business, adding an llms.txt file is a low-cost, optional step that may help as the convention matures. It should not replace fundamentals that clearly matter for AI visibility: crawlable pages, accurate structured data, consistent business information, and helpful answer-first content.