By Danielle EvalandWhat llms.txt actually is
Let's clear up the mystery first, because the name makes it sound more technical than it is. An llms.txt file is just a small text file, written in plain markdown, that you save at the very top of your website. So it lives at an address like yoursite.com/llms.txt, the same way your logo or a favicon does.
Inside it, you write a short, clear summary of your business and a tidy list of links to your most important pages. That's the whole idea. It's a note you leave for AI, in language AI finds easy to read.
llms.txt = a simple markdown file at the root of your site that gives AI tools a clean summary of what you do, plus links to the pages that matter most.
Why does that help? Because a normal web page is a messy thing for a machine. It's wrapped in navigation menus, cookie banners, pop-ups, ads and heavy scripts. A person's eye skips past all that. An AI has to wade through it, and its "reading budget" – the amount it can take in at once – is limited. The person who proposed llms.txt, AI researcher Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI, put it simply back in September 2024: the site's own author knows best which content actually matters, so let them just say so.
llms.txt is that "just say so." Instead of hoping the AI digs the right facts out of a cluttered page, you hand it the clean version on a plate.
What one looks like inside
This is the part that surprises people. There's no code, no special software, nothing to install. If you can write a shopping list, you can read an llms.txt file. The format has only one required piece: a heading with your business name. Everything else is optional, but a good one usually has a one-line summary and a short set of links.
Here's a tiny example for an imaginary electrician, so you can see how plain it really is:
Read it back and notice what it does. In a few short lines it tells AI who this business is, where it works, what it sells, why it can be trusted, and where to go for more. No guessing. The > line is a summary. Each ## heading starts a section, and each bullet is a link with a short note. Some sites also publish clean markdown copies of their pages – that's why the links above end in .md – but you can just as easily point at your normal pages.
Want to see a real one? We practise what we preach – you can read Evara's own file live at weareevara.com/llms.txt. It's the same shape as the example above: a summary, our services, our proof, and how to reach us.
llms.txt vs robots.txt vs sitemap.xml
If you've ever peeked under a website's hood, you may already know two other little files that live in the same spot: robots.txt and sitemap.xml. People muddle them up, so here's the difference in one glance. They don't compete – they do three different jobs.
| File | What it's for | Who it talks to |
|---|---|---|
| robots.txt | Says which pages crawlers may or may not visit. A doorman, not a guide. | Search and AI crawlers |
| sitemap.xml | Lists every page so crawlers can find them all. A full index, no summary. | Search engines, mainly |
| llms.txt | Summarises your site in plain words and points to the pages that matter most. A guide, not a list. | AI language models |
The easiest way to hold it in your head: robots.txt sets the rules, sitemap.xml lists everything, and llms.txt explains the point. A sitemap might have 400 links with no context. llms.txt might have eight links with a sentence each, telling AI exactly why they matter. It's less of a phone book and more of a friendly receptionist.
And to be clear, adding llms.txt doesn't replace the other two. If AI can't read your actual pages, a summary file won't save you. We go deeper on that in how to make your website readable to AI, which is the more important job of the two.
Do AI engines actually use it yet?
Here's where I have to be straight with you, because plenty of blog posts won't be. llms.txt is a good idea with a real problem: as of 2026, there's very little evidence the big AI engines actually read it. It's a proposed convention that caught on with publishers faster than it caught on with the AI companies themselves.
Those numbers tell a clear story. Loads of sites have added the file, but the AI crawlers mostly aren't asking for it. Google's John Mueller said it plainly on Bluesky in June 2025: "no AI system currently uses llms.txt," adding that you can tell from your server logs that the AI services don't even check for the file.
There's a twist worth knowing. A few AI companies – including Anthropic, Cloudflare and Mintlify – publish their own llms.txt files, yet none has said its crawlers read yours. So the industry is hedging: happy to leave a note, not yet committed to reading everyone else's.
Don't let anyone sell you llms.txt as a ranking hack. It is not an official standard and there's no proof it lifts you in ChatGPT or Google's AI today. Anyone promising otherwise is guessing – or selling.
Our honest take: should you add one?
So if the engines mostly ignore it, why did we bother adding one to our own site, and why do we still tell clients it's worth doing? Because the maths is lopsided. It costs almost nothing to add, and it might help – and standards often go this way, quietly adopted before they're official. That's a fair bet to make when the downside is ten minutes of work.
- It's a cheap, low-risk bet. One small file, no code, no ongoing cost. If the engines start using it tomorrow, you're already set.
- It forces useful clarity. Writing a clean, honest summary of your business is a good exercise whether or not AI ever reads it. Most owners can't state clearly what they do in one line.
- It is not magic. It won't rescue a site AI can't read, won't fix wrong facts scattered across the web, and won't make you the recommended choice on its own.
- Order matters. Do the fundamentals first – a readable site, consistent facts, real reviews. Add llms.txt as a small bonus on top, not as your first move.
llms.txt is worth doing, but it's the cherry, not the cake. Get the cake right first.
Danielle Evaland, Founder of EvaraAdd llms.txt because it's easy and might pay off later – not because it's a shortcut to being recommended by AI. The real wins come from a site AI can read and facts it can trust.
How to make one in ten minutes
If you'd like to add one yourself, it's genuinely quick. Here's the whole job.
# and your business name, add a one-line > summary, then a ## Key pages section with a handful of links, each with a short note. Copy the shape of the example above.llms.txt and upload it so it opens at yoursite.com/llms.txt. Then keep it accurate whenever your services, hours or prices change.That really is it. Keep it honest and keep it current – a summary that's out of date is worse than none, because it teaches AI something wrong about you.
And if you'd rather not fiddle with files at all, that's fair. When we build a website built for AI, the llms.txt file, the clean markdown, the structured data and the readable pages all come as standard – so the AI-friendly plumbing is done for you from day one.
