# What is llms.txt and why your site needs one

*2026-06-07 · Discoverability & Structure*

> A plain-English explanation of the llms.txt standard — what it is, what goes in it, and why it's becoming table stakes for AI discoverability.

## The problem llms.txt solves

When an AI assistant answers a question using your website, it doesn't experience your
site the way a person does. It doesn't see your navigation, your hero image, or your
carefully art-directed homepage. It ingests text — and it has a limited budget for how
much it will read. If that budget gets spent on cookie banners, nav menus, and
boilerplate, the substance of your site may never get read at all.

`llms.txt` is a direct answer to that problem: a single, human-curated file that says
*"here is what matters on this site, and here is where to find it."*

## What goes in it

The format is deliberately simple — it's just Markdown. A minimal `llms.txt` has:

- An `# H1` with your site or organisation name
- A `>` blockquote one-liner summarising what the site is
- Optional sections (`## Core pages`, `## Guides`) listing important URLs with a short description after each

```
# Acme Analytics

> Self-serve product analytics for B2B SaaS teams.

## Core pages
- [Pricing](https://acme.com/pricing): Plans, limits, and what each tier includes.
- [Docs](https://acme.com/docs): API reference and integration guides.
```

That's it. The companion file `llms-full.txt` carries the full text content for engines
that want to ingest everything in one request.

## Why it matters now

AI-mediated discovery is no longer a fringe channel. When a marketing manager's
prospects ask an assistant *"which tools do X?"*, the assistant assembles its answer
from whatever it can read and trust. A clean `llms.txt`:

- **Curates** — you decide what's authoritative rather than leaving the model to infer it.
- **Compresses** — the model spends its attention budget on substance, not chrome.
- **Signals effort** — like a good sitemap, it's a quiet credibility marker.

## The honest caveat

`llms.txt` is a convention with growing adoption, not a universally honoured standard.
Not every crawler reads it today. But it costs almost nothing to publish, it can't hurt,
and it positions you correctly for where discovery is heading. This very site serves one
at [/llms.txt](/llms.txt) — view it, then publish your own.

## What to do this week

1. Draft an `llms.txt` listing your 5–10 most important pages with one-line descriptions.
2. Place it at `https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt`.
3. Reference it from `robots.txt` as a comment so crawlers can find it.
4. Add a fuller `llms-full.txt` if your content library justifies it.