llms.txt

What Is llms.txt?

llms.txt is an emerging convention — originally proposed by developer Jeremy Howard in 2024 — for a plain-text file that website owners place at their root domain (e.g., scope.online/llms.txt) to provide AI language models with a structured, human-readable summary of their website.

Unlike robots.txt (which controls crawler access permissions) or sitemap.xml (which provides a structured list of URLs for indexing), llms.txt is designed to help AI systems quickly understand what a website is about, who it's for, and what its key content areas are — without requiring the AI to crawl and synthesize the entire site.

The Purpose of llms.txt

AI language models often encounter websites with:

• Complex navigation structures that are hard to parse programmatically
• JavaScript-heavy interfaces that don't render well for AI crawlers
• Large amounts of content with no clear hierarchy for an AI to prioritize

llms.txt gives website owners a direct channel to communicate their most important information to AI systems in a format optimized for LLM comprehension: clear markdown, direct statements, and organized links to key content.

What a Good llms.txt Contains

A well-crafted llms.txt typically includes:

1. Product/company summary — What you do, who you serve, why it matters
2. Pricing — Clear pricing tiers and feature descriptions
3. Key features or services — Structured list of your primary offerings with links
4. Target audiences — Who uses your product and for what
5. Key content links — Links to your most important learn articles, guides, comparison pages
6. Company information — Founded, location, contact
7. Links organized by category — Guides, glossary, knowledge base, etc.

llms.txt vs. llms-full.txt

A companion convention llms-full.txt has emerged for websites that want to provide a more comprehensive index — including descriptions of each piece of content, summaries of articles, and more detailed product information. Think of llms.txt as a table of contents and llms-full.txt as the index.

Scope publishes both at scope.online/llms.txt and scope.online/llms-full.txt.

Is llms.txt a Standard?

As of 2026, llms.txt is a proposed convention, not a formal standard. It is not officially supported by all AI providers, though it is gaining adoption. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google have not formally committed to reading llms.txt files in any specific way. However, the growing adoption of the convention means many LLMs and AI crawlers do encounter and read these files.

Q: Does llms.txt replace schema markup? A: No. llms.txt and schema markup serve different purposes. Schema markup is machine-structured data embedded in your web pages that search engines and AI crawlers read when indexing your content. llms.txt is a plain-text summary at the domain level that provides context to AI systems reading your site holistically. Both are valuable for AI visibility.

Q: Is llms.txt required for AI visibility? A: No — it's one signal among many. A business with no llms.txt can still have excellent AI visibility through strong citations, complete GBP, and good schema markup. But for content-heavy websites, llms.txt provides a useful additional signal that helps AI systems navigate your content efficiently.