What is llms.txt, and is it worth writing one?

This site ships with an llms.txt file, and clients often ask what it is. Usually it's because a newsletter or a competitor has told them it's essential.

The honest answer sits somewhere between essential and pointless. It's worth getting right, because the file is cheap and the hype around it isn't.

What llms.txt is

llms.txt is a plain-text file written in markdown and served from the root of your domain, at /llms.txt. It sits next to robots.txt and your sitemap, and it does a different job from both.

• robots.txt says where crawlers are allowed to go.
• sitemap.xml lists the pages that exist.
• llms.txt says what the site is, in your words, and which pages matter most.

The idea was proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in September 2024. The thinking is simple. A language model trying to understand your business has to piece it together from navigation, marketing copy and whatever survives being stripped of styling. llms.txt hands it a short, curated summary instead.

The format is deliberately light. The spec at llmstxt.org only requires one thing, a heading with your name. By convention you add a one or two sentence summary as a blockquote, then a few sections of links, each with a short note. There's also an optional section for pages a model can skip if it's short on room.

Who actually reads it in October 2026

This is where most of the advice online goes wrong, so it's worth being precise.

Google Search ignores it

Google's guide to optimising for generative AI features in Search, first published in May 2026, says plainly that Google Search ignores llms.txt. Having one won't help or hurt your visibility in Google, including AI Overviews and AI Mode. The guide lists "unnecessary AI text files" among the things you can skip.

Chrome checks it, for a different reason

Chrome's Lighthouse tool has added an experimental llms.txt check, grouped with other checks for how well a site works with AI agents that browse on someone's behalf. That's about agents finding their way around a site once they're on it. It isn't a search ranking signal, and it doesn't contradict what Google Search says.

The answer engines haven't committed

We couldn't find any public statement from OpenAI, Anthropic or Perplexity saying their answer engines read llms.txt on other people's sites when they put together a response. Several AI companies publish llms.txt files for their own developer docs, and coding tools and agents do use those files when someone points them at a documentation site. That's a real use, just a narrower one than the hype suggests.

So the accurate summary is this. llms.txt isn't a ranking factor and it isn't a way to get cited. It's a well-formed brief that some tools and agents will read when they land on your site, and that most search systems currently don't.

Why we still write one

Given all that, you might expect us to skip it. We don't, for three reasons.

It's cheap. A good llms.txt takes about an hour. On this site it's generated from the CMS at build time, so it keeps itself up to date. If it does nothing, you've lost an hour.

It helps the systems that do read it. Agents, coding tools and people pasting your site into a chat window all get a cleaner picture from a tidy summary than from a homepage built around a video and a logo wall.

It's a useful test of your positioning. This is the part we didn't expect. When we write one with a client, the two-sentence summary takes longer than the rest of the file combined. If you can't say what you do, who for and what you aren't in two plain sentences, the file has done its job. It's shown you the problem, and that problem is costing you on every other page too.

What goes in one

Here's a short example for a made-up Brisbane joinery business. Yours should be about this length.

# Riverbend Joinery

> Custom kitchens and built-in joinery
> for homes in Brisbane's inner west.
> We design, build and install. Most
> jobs take 8 to 12 weeks.

## Key pages
- [Kitchens](https://example.com/kitchens):
  styles, materials, price ranges
- [Process](https://example.com/process):
  measure, design, build, install
- [Projects](https://example.com/work):
  recent jobs with photos and scope

## Facts
- Service area: Brisbane inner west
- Kitchens usually $25k to $60k
- Contact: hello@example.com

Notice what isn't there. No adjectives, no "premium" or "passionate", no list of every page on the site. Just the facts a stranger would need to describe the business correctly.

Our own is generated the same way. You can see it at metamode.co/llms.txt. Every project and post appears in it as soon as it's published.

How to write a good one

1. Start with the summary. Write it the way you'd brief a new salesperson who'll never get to ask you a question. What you sell, who it's for, where you work, and anything that rules people out.
2. Pick five pages, not fifty. The pages that answer what a buyer actually asks: what you do, what it costs, how it works, proof that you've done it before, how to get in touch.
3. Give each link one factual line. "Price ranges and what drives them" beats "Discover our flexible pricing".
4. Add the facts people hunt for. Service area, price shape, typical timeframes, contact details. If it's buried three clicks deep on your site, put it here.
5. Only state what you'd stand behind. If a model repeats a line from your llms.txt word for word, you should be happy with it.
6. Keep it current. A stale llms.txt is worse than none, because it contradicts your site.

The cheap fix and the real fix

Cheap fix: write the file by hand and drop it in your site's public folder. That's fine for a small site that rarely changes. Put a reminder in your calendar to check it every quarter.

Real fix: generate it from your CMS at build time, the way your sitemap is generated. Then it can't drift from the site, and nobody has to remember it exists.

Common questions

Where does llms.txt go?

At the root of your domain, at /llms.txt, served as plain text. The same place as robots.txt.

Is llms.txt the same as robots.txt?

No. robots.txt controls access. llms.txt describes what the site is. One doesn't replace the other, and llms.txt has no effect on what crawlers are allowed to fetch.

Will llms.txt improve my Google rankings?

No. Google has said Search ignores it. If someone is selling it to you as an SEO fix, that's a reason to be careful about the rest of what they're selling.

Do I need it if I already have structured data?

They do different jobs. Structured data marks up specific facts on a page so search engines can read them reliably. llms.txt is a short written summary with a curated set of links. Neither is a substitute for clear writing on the pages themselves, which is what every search and answer system relies on most.

If you'd like a second pair of eyes on your llms.txt, or on what AI tools are saying about you, book a 30-minute call.