llms.txt, explained plainly

llms.txt is a proposed convention: a markdown file at the root of your domain, at yoursite.com/llms.txt, that summarises your website for a language model. Think of it as a hand-written map for a reader who arrives with no context and limited patience.

Let us be honest about adoption

This is a community proposal, not a ratified standard, and adoption by the major AI companies is partial and changing. Anyone telling you it is mandatory is overselling. Anyone telling you it is useless is guessing.

Our position: it takes fifteen minutes, it is a plain text file that cannot break anything, and it forces you to articulate what your website is for in a way that improves your other pages. Do it, do not obsess over it, and do not let it displace structured data — which unambiguously does matter.

The format

Markdown. One H1 with your website name, a blockquote summary, then H2 sections of annotated links.

# Fernway

> Quoting and invoicing software for field service crews under ten people.
> Flat price per crew, no per-seat fees. Australian owned, since 2019.

## Core pages

- [Pricing](https://fernway.co/pricing): all plans, no per-seat fees, AUD
- [How quoting works](https://fernway.co/quotes): the four-step on-site flow
- [Integrations](https://fernway.co/integrations): Xero, MYOB, Stripe

## Support

- [FAQ](https://fernway.co/faq): 18 answered questions
- [Contact](https://fernway.co/contact): phone and email, AEST business hours

## Optional

- [Changelog](https://fernway.co/changelog): release history

Rules that make it useful

• Absolute URLs. The reader may have no idea what domain it came from.
• Describe, do not sell. The colon annotation should say what is on the page, not why it is great.
• Be specific in the summary. "Field service crews under ten people" is a useful constraint. "Innovative software solutions" is noise.
• Put an ## Optional section last. By convention, a reader working under a size limit can skip it.
• Keep it current. A file listing pages that 404 is worse than no file.

Serve it correctly

It must return text/plain and a 200 status. The single most common mistake is an SPA fallback rule that serves your homepage HTML at /llms.txt. Check it in a browser after you deploy.

Some sites also publish llms-full.txt containing the actual page content in markdown. That is a bigger commitment and only worth it for documentation-heavy sites.

Common questions

Is llms.txt an official standard?

No. It is a community proposal that has seen real but partial adoption. Treat it as low-cost, uncertain-benefit housekeeping rather than a requirement.

Where does the file go?

The root of your domain, so yoursite.com/llms.txt. It must be served as plain text with a 200 status.

Does llms.txt replace robots.txt or sitemap.xml?

No. robots.txt controls access, sitemap.xml lists every URL, and llms.txt explains what the site is about and which pages matter most. They do different jobs.