What it is
A file at /llms.txt with a short description of your company and links to your most important pages, written in Markdown. It's a proposed convention, not a standard that AI platforms have adopted.
What AI platforms document
OpenAI documents its crawlers and robots.txt rules for ChatGPT search. Its published guidance on appearing in search is about allowing OAI-SearchBot, not about llms.txt.
Should you add one?
- Yes, if it's quick. It does no harm and may help tools that read it.
- No, if it delays real work: crawler access, product facts, comparison pages and independent sources.
What a good one contains
- One line on what you do and for whom.
- Links to product, pricing, integrations, comparison and key guides.
- Plain descriptions, no marketing slogans.
Our own site has one; we treat it as housekeeping, not strategy.
A minimal example
# Example Software
> Month-end close software for finance teams at 100–1,000 person companies in the US and UK.
## Key pages
- [Product facts](https://example.com/facts): who it's for, integrations, pricing
- [Pricing](https://example.com/pricing)
- [Compare close tools](https://example.com/compare)
- [NetSuite integration](https://example.com/integrations/netsuite)
Questions
Does Google use llms.txt?
We haven't seen documentation from Google saying it does. Treat it as optional.
Can llms.txt hurt?
Not if it's accurate. An outdated file is worse than none.
Should it link to every page?
No. Link the pages that answer buyers' main questions.
Why we still recommend the basics first
llms.txt is attractive because it's quick and feels like direct communication with AI. But AI assistants that search the web still depend on being able to crawl your pages, on what those pages say and on what other sites say about you. None of that changes with a new file. If your crawler access, facts and sources are in order, llms.txt is a harmless extra; if they aren't, it won't compensate.
How to keep it maintained
Generate it from the same source as your sitemap, so new key pages appear automatically. Our own site builds llms.txt during each release, with the main pages and every article.
Start here: AI visibility for B2B. More articles in AI visibility.
