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What is llms.txt

llms.txt in plain words - what the file is, how it differs from robots.txt and sitemap.xml, who needs it and what not to expect from it

proposal second edition, August 10, 2026

What the file looks like

Section titled “What the file looks like”
llms.txtA minimal file
  1. # Kolos Bakery

    Namerequired

    The only required part

  2. > Bread and pastry with delivery in Kazan. Menu, prices, delivery terms.

    Summaryoptional

    What the site is about, in a sentence or two

  3. ## Main
    - [Menu and prices](https://example.com/menu.md): the full range
    - [Delivery](https://example.com/delivery.md): zones, timing, cost

    Sectionoptional

    Links with notes, grouped by meaning

The format is Markdown: plain text with simple marks. A person and a program read it equally well.

Exact rules: the file format.

How it differs from robots.txt and sitemap.xml

Section titled “How it differs from robots.txt and sitemap.xml”

The three files get confused because all of them sit in the site root. They answer different questions.

Three files in the site root
  1. robots.txtMay I go hereaccess rules; read by every search robot
  2. sitemap.xmlWhich addresses exista complete list of pages, no judgment
  3. llms.txtWhere to start and what matters herea short map with notes

llms.txt neither forbids nor allows anything. Closing a site to an AI bot is done in robots.txt: AI crawlers.

Who needs the file

Section titled “Who needs the file”

Documentation sites. This is the file’s home ground. A developer asks an assistant to write code, the assistant goes to the library docs, and llms.txt shows where things are. OpenAI, Anthropic, Stripe, Cloudflare, Vercel and dozens of others publish their own.

References and knowledge bases. With a lot of well-structured material, a map helps.

Stores and company sites. The benefit here is smaller and not proven. The file does no harm and costs little, but do not expect sales to grow because of it. For a store, structured data matters far more: search engines read it.

What not to expect

Section titled “What not to expect”

What is known and what is not

Confirmed

  • Large documentation sites publish the file.
  • Agents in code editors can work with such files when a user gives them the address.
  • Lighthouse checks for the file in an experimental category.

Not proven

  • That the file improves search rankings. Google states plainly that Search does not use such files.
  • That ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini find and read the llms.txt of other sites on their own. No bot owner claims that.
  • That the file increases mentions in AI answers.

What it does not mean

  • A missing file does not close a site to AI: pages are read without it.
  • A present file does not open what is closed: it does not control access.

The studies in detail: Does llms.txt work.

And what is llms-full.txt

Section titled “And what is llms-full.txt”

A different file: not links but the whole text of the documentation in one place. It is not in the proposal; it is a practice of documentation platforms. More: What is llms-full.txt.

Next

Section titled “Next”