llms.txt explained: the sitemap for AI
llms.txt is a plain-text Markdown file you place at the root of your domain (yoursite.com/llms.txt) that gives AI answer engines a clean, curated map of your most important content. Proposed at llmstxt.org, it's like robots.txt and sitemap.xml but written for language models: a short description of what your site is, then organized lists of links with one-line summaries. It helps LLMs find and correctly characterize your best pages instead of guessing from raw HTML.
what problem llms.txt solves
Language models have limited context windows and your HTML is full of navigation, scripts, and boilerplate that waste it. llms.txt gives the model a clean, human- and machine-readable summary of your site and links to the pages that matter — so it spends its attention on your actual content, not your footer.
It's a complement to, not a replacement for, robots.txt (which controls access) and sitemap.xml (which lists every url for indexing). llms.txt is curated: it's your editorial pick of what an AI should read first.
what goes in an llms.txt
The format is deliberately simple Markdown. A typical file has a title, a blockquote description, and a few sections of links each with a short summary.
- An H1 with your site or product name.
- A blockquote (>) with a one-sentence description of what the site is.
- Optional sections (## Pages, ## Guides, ## FAQ) each listing links as `- [title](url): summary`.
- Plain language — no marketing fluff; write it as you'd brief an assistant.
generating it from your own content
The best llms.txt files are generated from the same data that builds your site, so they never go stale. seocheck does exactly this — its own /llms.txt is built from its article list — and you can do the same with a small route that reads your content model and prints the Markdown.
Once it's live, run your site through seocheck: it checks for an llms.txt as part of the GEO score, so you can confirm it's discoverable.
Check your own page
seocheck scores your on-page SEO, GEO (AI answer engines), and sitemap health in seconds — free, no account.
FAQ
- is llms.txt an official standard?
- It's a community proposal (llmstxt.org), not yet an enforced standard adopted by every engine. But it's low-cost to add, increasingly recognized, and aligns with how engines already prefer clean, summarized content — so it's worth shipping.
- where do I put the llms.txt file?
- At the root of your domain: https://yoursite.com/llms.txt. Some sites also publish llms-full.txt with expanded content. seocheck checks the root path when scoring your GEO readiness.
- does llms.txt replace my sitemap.xml?
- No. sitemap.xml is for search-engine indexing and lists every url; llms.txt is a curated, summarized guide for language models. Ship both — they serve different consumers.