GEO glossary

llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed standard for a Markdown file placed at a website's root (/llms.txt) that gives large language models a short summary of the site and a curated list of links to its most useful pages, ideally with clean Markdown versions of each.

Reviewed by Gareth Hoyle, Managing Director
Last reviewed 31 October 2026

Who proposed llms.txt?

Jeremy Howard published the proposal at llmstxt.org on 3 September 2024. The aim is to give language models a compact, readable guide to a site's content, without the navigation, scripts and layout code that come with full HTML pages. The file can sit at the root or under a subpath such as /docs/llms.txt.

What goes in an llms.txt file?

The file is plain Markdown, in a fixed order. The proposal also suggests publishing a Markdown copy of each important page at the same URL with .md added.

An H1 with the name of the site or project, which is required
A blockquote with a short summary
Optional paragraphs or lists with more detail, without headings
H2 sections containing lists of links, each with optional notes
An H2 section titled Optional for secondary links that can be skipped

Does llms.txt help AI visibility?

The evidence so far is weak. In April 2025 Google's John Mueller said that, as far as he knew, none of the AI services had said they used llms.txt, and compared it to the keywords meta tag. Google's documentation for AI Overviews and AI Mode says you don't need to create new machine readable files or AI text files to appear in them.

The file is cheap to publish and does no harm, so it is reasonable to add one. It does not replace crawlable HTML, robots.txt access for AI crawlers or clear content on the pages themselves.

Example

A plumbing firm's llms.txt might open with the business name as the H1 and a one-line summary of the towns and services it covers. An H2 called Services would list links to its boiler, bathroom and emergency call-out pages, and the Optional section would link to its blog archive.