Technical Foundations · 1.5
llms.txt
A newer, separate file — different from robots.txt — designed to give AI systems a clean, curated summary of your site's most important content.
Why this matters
The customer’s side
Entirely invisible to them.
The AI’s side
Emerging and unproven — no major AI company confirms using it for citations
As of early 2026, no major AI company — not OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, or Meta — has publicly confirmed that its production systems actually read or act on this file for deciding what to cite. It's a real, growing standard, adopted by over 800,000 sites, but its main confirmed use right now is helping AI coding tools like Cursor or Claude Code quickly understand a codebase or documentation site — not helping ChatGPT decide who the best estate agent in your town is. It's a low-cost, forward-looking bet on where things might be heading, not a proven lever today.
How to check yours
Method 1 — Check whether it exists
the direct check.
- 1.Check whether yourwebsite.com/llms.txt exists.
Method 2 — Ask directly, since this changes fast
the confirmed/unproven status here can shift quickly — asking directly gets you the most current read.
- 1.Ask ChatGPT or Claude: "do AI systems currently use llms.txt files when deciding what businesses to cite?"
- 2.Treat the answer as a snapshot, not a permanent fact — recheck occasionally as the standard matures.
How to fix what you find
You decide it's worth doing
it's a small, low-cost file — here's exactly how to build it.
- 1.Create a plain text file named llms.txt.
- 2.Start with a level-1 Markdown heading of your business name, then a short 1-3 sentence summary of what you do and where.
- 3.Below that, list links to your most important pages (homepage, services, contact, key guides) each with a one-line description of what it covers.
- 4.Upload the file to your site's root, so it's reachable at yourwebsite.com/llms.txt.
You'd rather have AI do the writing
give it a list of your key pages and let it draft the file.
- 1.Paste your list of key pages and a short description of your business into ChatGPT or Claude.
- 2.Ask it to format the result as a valid llms.txt file, following the standard's structure.
- 3.Review the draft for accuracy before uploading it.
You decide it's not worth it yet
that's a reasonable call too — just don't let it distract from the confirmed items elsewhere in this guide.
Keeping on top of it
If you do implement this, update it quarterly, and keep it in sync with your robots.txt so the two files don't contradict each other.
How Reyse handles this
Done With You
we build this for you as a low-cost addition, with realistic expectations set about its current impact.
Done For You
we include and maintain this as part of ongoing technical work, without treating it as a primary lever.