What Is llms.txt? A Plain-English Guide With a Real Example

llms.txt is a plain text file, written in Markdown, that sits at the root of your website and summarises what the site is about for AI tools. It works like a short, curated table of contents: who you are, what you offer and links to your most useful pages. It is a voluntary proposal, not an official search engine standard.

Where llms.txt came from

What the research says: llms.txt was proposed by Jeremy Howard in September 2024. The only required part is an H1 heading with the site or project name, followed by an optional short summary in a blockquote and optional sections of links. (Source: llmstxt.org.)

The idea is simple. AI tools have limited space to read a website, and most web pages are full of menus, scripts and design. A short Markdown file gives them a clean summary to start from.

What an llms.txt file looks like

A minimal file has a title, a one-line summary and a few lists of links:

# Example Company

> Example Company builds WordPress websites for small businesses in the US and UK.

## Services
- [WordPress development](https://example.com/wordpress/): Custom WordPress websites from $890
- [Care plans](https://example.com/care/): Monthly updates, backups and support

## Optional
- [Blog](https://example.com/blog/): Guides about planning and running a website

From our projects: Our own site publishes one. attors.com/llms.txt describes Attors Technologies, our services, prices and key guides, so AI tools have an accurate summary to work from.

How to write your own llms.txt

1. Start with an H1 heading containing your business name.
2. Add a one or two sentence summary in a blockquote: what you do, for whom and where.
3. Add H2 sections such as Services, Pricing, Guides or About, each with a list of links.
4. After each link, add a short note explaining what the page covers.
5. Put less important links under an H2 called Optional, so tools can skip them.
6. Save it as llms.txt at the root of your domain and check it loads in a browser.

What llms.txt does and doesn’t do

What the research says: Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode, and no special optimizations are needed. Pages need to be indexed and eligible to be shown as a snippet. (Source: Google Search Central.)

• It does give AI tools a clean, accurate summary of your business and point them to your best pages.
• It does not guarantee that ChatGPT, Gemini or Google AI Overviews will mention you.
• It is not a ranking factor in Google Search, and Google does not list it in its guidance.
• It does not replace robots.txt, sitemaps or good, crawlable pages.

llms.txt vs robots.txt vs sitemap.xml

File	What it does	Who uses it
robots.txt	Tells crawlers which URLs they may access	Search engines and most crawlers
sitemap.xml	Lists the URLs you want discovered	Search engines
llms.txt	Summarises the site and links key pages in Markdown	Some AI tools and agents, voluntarily

Should your website have one?

For most business websites, yes. It takes under an hour, costs nothing to host and keeps your business description accurate. Just treat it as a small extra, not a strategy. The bigger wins for AI visibility are clear service pages, real prices, accurate schema and genuine reviews. Our AI search optimization service covers all of these, including setting up llms.txt.

Get help with AI search visibility

Want an llms.txt file and a clear plan for AI search? Tell us about your website and we reply within one business day with questions or a written quote.