Glossary

What is llms.txt?

In short

llms.txt is a simple text file in a website's root (at /llms.txt) with which you tell AI systems and agents which content and endpoints are relevant to them — curated, in Markdown and without the ballast of navigation, ads and scripts. For AI it is roughly what robots.txt is for search-engine crawlers: a machine-readable wayfinder.

What an llms.txt contains

A short overview of the website, followed by curated links to the most important content — documentation, core pages, policies — each as a Markdown list with a brief description.

Optionally it points to structured data or an MCP server. Some sites additionally offer an llms-full.txt with the full content in one file.

What llms.txt is good for

AI models have limited context windows and stumble over HTML ballast. An llms.txt delivers the relevant content bundled and clean, so a model grasps the website faster and more accurately.

It is a cheap building block of an agent-ready website — alongside Schema.org, clean HTML and answer-first content.

Limits and reality

llms.txt is a proposed standard, not a law — not every provider consumes it. Its usefulness grows with adoption.

Because the file is cheap to create and never hurts, it belongs in a GEO strategy: low risk, potentially growing return.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

01Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?

No. robots.txt controls what crawlers may do; llms.txt curates which content is relevant to AI models and how it is structured. They complement each other.

02Does the file have to be named /llms.txt?

Yes, the proposal places the file at /llms.txt in the root, in Markdown. Sometimes there is an additional llms-full.txt with the full content.

03Does llms.txt already help today?

Its usefulness grows with adoption. Because the file is cheap to create and part of the agent-ready basics, it is already worthwhile as part of a GEO strategy.