What is llms.txt for?
Web pages are cluttered with navigation, ads and markup that models have to wade through. llms.txt offers a tidy, human-readable index of your key pages and what they cover, in Markdown.
Think of it as a curated reading list you hand to an AI, pointing it at the content you most want understood and cited.
How is it different from a sitemap?
A sitemap lists every URL for search-engine crawlers. llms.txt is selective and descriptive - a short, prioritised map written for language models, not an exhaustive URL dump.
They complement each other; llms.txt doesn't replace your sitemap or robots.txt.
Should you add one?
It's low-cost and low-risk, so for a content-led site it's a reasonable early bet - but be realistic: adoption by the major engines is still emerging, so treat it as an emerging edge, not a guaranteed win.
The fundamentals - answer-first content, clean structure, crawler access - matter far more today.
Frequently asked questions
Is llms.txt required?
No. It's an optional, emerging convention - not a requirement and not yet universally used by the major AI engines.
Do AI engines use it yet?
Adoption is early and evolving. It's a low-cost bet for content-led sites, but don't expect it to replace the fundamentals of citable content.
See how your pages score with AI search
Paste a URL into the free AI Visibility Check - the same check RankMoss runs on every post it writes.
Run the free check