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AI SEO Glossary
llms.txt?TL;DR — llms.txt is a community-proposed Markdown file at /llms.txt that gives large language models a curated, machine-readable map of a site's most important content. Proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in September 2024 and increasingly adopted across the AI tooling ecosystem.
llms.txt is a community-proposed text-file standard that lives at /llms.txton a website and provides large language models with a curated, machine-readable map of the site's most important content. Proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI in September 2024. The file is written in Markdown, opens with the site name (H1) and a short blockquote summary, and lists key sections — about, product categories, reference content, policies — as labeled links.
Distinct from robots.txt (directive — what crawlers may access) and sitemap.xml (comprehensive — every indexable URL); llms.txt is editorial — a curated subset that tells an LLM “here are the 20-40 pages that explain who we are.” Adopted across Anthropic Claude, Cursor, MCP tooling, and increasingly the major engines through 2025-2026. Full spec, sample file, and implementation guide on /llms-txt-implementation.
On the websites of AI-forward companies (Anthropic ships one, Cursor ships one, most MCP-tooling vendors ship one). Inside Claude Projects and Computer Use sessions, where Claude can be prompted to fetch and parse a target site's llms.txt to get oriented. In agency proposals as a low-cost foundation deliverable.
We ship llms.txtas a foundation deliverable on every AI-SEO retainer. It's cheap to produce, durable (changes infrequently after first publication), and increases the surface area on which our other AEO/GEO work pays dividends.
Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI proposed the standard in September 2024. The full spec lives at llmstxt.org with community implementations across the developer-tooling and AI ecosystems.
robots.txt is directive (what crawlers may or may not access). sitemap.xml is comprehensive (every indexable URL). llms.txt is editorial — a curated subset that tells an LLM “here are the 20-40 pages that explain who we are.” All three are complementary.
Markdown. Starts with an H1 site name, then a blockquote one-sentence summary, then sections (about, services, reference, policies) as labeled link lists. Sample skeletons are published at llmstxt.org; we ship a customized version per client.
Anthropic Claude, Cursor, and a broad MCP tooling ecosystem actively consume llms.txt as of 2025-2026. Major engine adoption (OpenAI, Google) is increasing but not yet universal. The cost to publish is low enough that the standard is worth shipping today.
At /llms.txt on your site root — same convention as robots.txt. Some sites also publish /llms-full.txt with the actual content concatenated, so an LLM can ingest the full corpus in one fetch. See /llms-txt-implementation.
Indirectly. llms.txt isn't a citation signal on its own — it's a discoverability and grounding aid. But making your most cite-worthy content easier for LLMs to find compounds with the rest of your AEO signal. Low-cost foundation work.
Cheap foundation deliverable, lasting AEO surface lift. Call 888-982-8269 to scope.