llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed standard for giving AI systems and large language models a single, predictable entry point to understand what your website is and what it offers — the same way robots.txt gives crawlers a predictable place to learn crawl rules.
What It Is
A plain text file placed at your domain root:
https://yourdomain.com/llms.txtIt contains a concise, structured summary of your organization written specifically for AI consumption — identity, contact details, services, key pages, and links to deeper AI-readable resources like your Semantic Knowledge Graph and Markdown Knowledge Base.
Unlike a sitemap (built for search engine crawlers to discover URLs) or robots.txt (built to declare crawl permissions), llms.txt is built to be read and understood directly — it's prose and structured lists an LLM can ingest in a single fetch, without needing to crawl and parse your entire site.
Why It Matters
AI systems increasingly answer questions like "who are the best web designers in Marin County" by synthesizing information from multiple sources rather than sending the user to click through search results. If your business isn't represented in a clear, machine-readable way, you're effectively invisible in that answer — regardless of how good your actual website is.
llms.txt gives AI systems a fast, reliable, low-ambiguity source to pull from. It directly improves your Accessibility Index and supports a higher AIA Score.
File Structure
A well-formed llms.txt typically includes:
# Company Name
> One-sentence description of what the organization does and who it serves.
- Website: https://yourdomain.com/
- Address: [physical address, if applicable]
- Phone: [phone number]
- Email: [contact email]
- Last Updated: [date]
---
## Services
[List of core services or offerings]
---
## Featured Projects / Products
[Notable work, case studies, or products with links]
---
## AI-Readable Layers
- llms.txt (this file): https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt
- llms-full.txt: https://yourdomain.com/llms-full.txt
- Semantic JSON: https://yourdomain.com/semantic/index.json
- Markdown directory: https://yourdomain.com/markdown/index.md
---
## Key Pages
[Sitemap-style list of important URLs]llms-full.txt
While llms.txt is meant to be a concise index, llms-full.txt is the complete, concatenated version — every Markdown file in your Markdown Knowledge Base combined into a single file. This lets an AI system retrieve your entire knowledge base in one fetch, rather than navigating a directory.
https://yourdomain.com/llms-full.txtAIA Matrix generates this automatically on the Professional plan by concatenating your /markdown/ directory in a consistent order.
Where to Place It
llms.txt and llms-full.txt must sit at your domain root — not in a subfolder:
✓ https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt
✗ https://yourdomain.com/files/llms.txtSee Installation or WordPress Setup for upload instructions.
A Note on Standards Status
llms.txt is a community-driven convention, not yet a ratified web standard. No major AI crawler is formally required to read it. That said, adoption is growing quickly, and major crawlers — including OpenAI's, Anthropic's, and Perplexity's — increasingly check for it. Early adoption costs very little and positions your site ahead of the standard's eventual formalization.
For the broader standards landscape, see Standards Glossary.
Validating Your File
After uploading, confirm it's live by visiting the URL directly in a browser — it should display as plain text, not a 404. For deeper validation including AI crawler access, see Validation.
How AIA Matrix Generates This
On every plan, AIA Matrix automatically generates an llms.txt tailored to your site's actual content — pulling your business identity, detected services, and key pages directly from your scan results. Professional plan users also receive an automatically generated llms-full.txt and ongoing regeneration as your site changes.