Key takeaways
- llms.txt is a proposal, not a standard, and support from assistants is uneven.
- It takes minutes to add and does no harm, so it is a reasonable extra.
- It does not replace clear pages, consistent facts and trusted mentions.
An llms.txt file is a short, plain-text summary of your site, kept at /llms.txt, that is meant to help language models find your most useful pages. It is a proposal that some sites have adopted, not a standard that every assistant reads. Adding one is cheap, but it should never be the main thing you do for AI visibility.
What goes in it
A good file is short and honest. It names the business, says in a sentence what it does, and then lists the pages worth reading, each with a one-line description.
# Example Company
> We help small businesses plan and run their accounting.
## Key pages
- [Services](https://example.com/services/): What we offer
- [About](https://example.com/about/): Who we are
- [Contact](https://example.com/contact/): How to reach us
Who reads it
There is no guarantee that any given assistant fetches the file. Some tools and developers use it, and some assistants may find it when they fetch your site. Treat it as a convenience for the readers that do, not as a ranking factor.
Should you add one?
| If | Then |
|---|---|
| You have a clear set of key pages | Add one: it takes minutes |
| You are still fixing indexing or inconsistent facts | Fix those first; they matter far more |
| Your site changes often | Generate the file from your page list so it never goes stale |
Keep it accurate
A file that lists pages that no longer exist, or describes services you have dropped, is worse than none. If you add one, generate it from the same source as your sitemap. That is how we build ours: the sitemap, the robots file and the llms file all come from one list of pages.
Make yours
The free llms.txt generator builds the file from a list of pages. For the bigger picture of what moves AI answers, read about how to write a page assistants quote and our AI visibility service.