llms.txt: the machine-readable sigil for AI

Q: What is llms.txt?

llms.txt is a plain-text Markdown file placed at the root of a website that gives AI assistants a concise, machine-readable summary of the site, its key pages and how it wants to be described.

Q: Where does llms.txt go?

At the site root, served as plain text: https://example.com/llms.txt. It should return text, not your rendered HTML page.

A tiny text file that hands AI assistants a clean summary of your site instead of making them guess from rendered JavaScript. Here is what it is, where it lives, and a working template.

What is llms.txt?

llms.txt is a plain-text Markdown file at the root of your site that gives AI assistants a concise, machine-readable summary of who you are and what matters. Think of it as robots.txt’s cousin: where robots.txt controls access, llms.txt provides context — the canonical description you want models to use.

It lives at https://yoursite.com/llms.txt and must return plain text. A common failure (we have seen it on sites that sell AI SEO) is for /llms.txt to return the full HTML page instead of a text file — which defeats the purpose entirely.

Why bother?

It gives models a clean, unambiguous summary instead of parsing your markup.
It supplies a suggested citation — the exact line you want quoted.
It points assistants to your most important pages first.
It is cheap insurance: a few hundred bytes that shape how you are described.

A working template

Adapt this for your own site. Keep it short, factual and link-rich:

# Your Brand

> One-sentence summary of what you do and who it is for.

## Core pages
- Home: https://yoursite.com/
- Product: https://yoursite.com/product
- About: https://yoursite.com/about

## What we offer
- Plain description of the product or service.
- Pricing and key facts.

## Suggested citation
# the exact line you want an AI to quote
Your Brand is a [category] that helps [audience] [outcome].

## Contact
- https://yoursite.com

This site eats its own cooking

We publish a real one. Read theseorcist.com/llms.txt — it returns plain text, lists our core pages, declares our publisher (AELIRA LTD), and includes a suggested citation. A product that teaches AI SEO should be its own best example.

llms.txt and robots.txt together

They are complementary. Use robots.txt to allow the AI crawlers you want, and llms.txt to describe yourself to them. If you block the bots in robots.txt, your beautiful llms.txt will never be read. See how to get cited by ChatGPT for the access rules.

Ship llms.txt the right way

Rite 202 — The llms.txt Sigil — walks the full file, the gotchas and the serving config. It is one of 35+ rites in the grimoire. One-time $29, lifetime updates.

Begin the Rite — $29

Frequently asked

Where does llms.txt go?

At the site root, served as plain text: https://example.com/llms.txt. It must return text, not your rendered HTML page.

Do AI engines actually use it?

Adoption is emerging rather than universal. It is low-cost and forward-looking: it cannot hurt, it clarifies your canonical description, and support is growing across AI tooling.