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May 15, 2026 · 8 min read

The Complete Guide to LLMs.txt — What It Is and How to Add It

LLMs.txt is an emerging standard that tells AI systems how to understand and cite your content. Learn how to create one in under 10 minutes.

RS

RS Digital Team

Published May 15, 2026

What Is LLMs.txt?

LLMs.txt is a plain-text file placed at the root of your domain — /llms.txt — that provides AI language models with a structured overview of your website's content, purpose, and key URLs. Think of it as a robots.txt for AI understanding, rather than AI crawling.

The format was proposed by Jeremy Howard and has been rapidly adopted by major sites including Cloudflare, Anthropic, and thousands of businesses that want to be cited accurately by AI systems.

Why Does LLMs.txt Matter?

When an AI model like ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity answers a query, it needs to understand which of your pages are canonical sources, which are legal boilerplate, and what your site is fundamentally about. Without this guidance, AI systems may cite the wrong page, misattribute content, or skip your site entirely.

  • Improves the accuracy of AI citations about your brand
  • Signals which pages are most authoritative and worth citing
  • Helps AI agents navigate your site more efficiently
  • Future-proofs your discoverability in AI-powered search

The LLMs.txt Format

The format is deliberately simple. A minimal valid LLMs.txt looks like this:

# My Company Name

> A brief description of what my company does in one or two sentences.
> This is for AI systems to understand context when citing or referencing us.

## Key Pages

- [Homepage](https://example.com/)
- [About Us](https://example.com/about/)
- [Blog](https://example.com/blog/)
- [Contact](https://example.com/contact/)

## Optional: Full content index

- [llms-full.txt](https://example.com/llms-full.txt): Extended content for deep indexing

Required sections

  • Title line — starts with #, contains your site or company name
  • Description blockquote — starts with >, 1–3 sentences
  • At least one URL section — markdown links to key pages

How to Add LLMs.txt to Any Site

Static / HTML sites

Create a file named llms.txt in your root public directory. Done.

WordPress

Upload llms.txt to your WordPress root folder via FTP or File Manager in cPanel. Alternatively, use a plugin like Yoast SEO that has begun supporting LLMs.txt generation.

PHP sites (like this one!)

Create a llms.txt file in your web root, or serve it dynamically via a route that returns the correct Content-Type: text/plain header.

Next.js / Vercel

Place llms.txt in your /public folder. It will be served at /llms.txt automatically.

Quick win: LLMs.txt is one of the easiest AI readiness improvements you can make. It takes under 10 minutes, and our audit will tell you exactly what needs fixing in yours.

Advanced: LLMs-full.txt

For sites with large amounts of content worthy of AI indexing, you can optionally provide an /llms-full.txt file. This contains a complete Markdown dump of your key content in a format optimised for LLM ingestion — reducing hallucinations and improving citation quality.

Link to it from your main llms.txt so AI systems know it exists.

Check If Your LLMs.txt Is Valid

Run our free SEO and AI readiness audit to verify your LLMs.txt is correctly formatted, accessible, and follows the current specification. We check both the presence and the format of the file.

Done!