What Is llms.txt and How to Create One (With Example)

llms.txt is a plain-text file, written in Markdown, that you publish at the root of your domain (yourdomain.com/llms.txt). It gives AI models a short, clean summary of who you are and which pages matter most, without the menus, banners and scripts that surround the real content of a normal web page. Think of it as a table of contents written for machines. For the formal definition, see the llms.txt glossary entry.

It is one of the first items in the brand foundations checklist inside Lumen, and one of the most common questions we get: what do I write in it, who creates it, and where does it go? This guide answers those three questions.

What it is for (and what it is not)

The goal is to make it easy for an AI agent to find the right page for the right question: your services, your prices, your coverage, your contact details. It reduces the chance that a model describes your company from an outdated third-party page.

Be realistic about its limits. llms.txt is a proposed convention, not a standard that every provider has confirmed they read, and publishing it does not guarantee citations or rankings. It costs about an hour and has no downside, so it is worth doing, but it works alongside allowing AI crawlers, good content and third-party mentions, not instead of them.

The format

1. 01
   A title: One H1 line (# Your Brand) with the name of your company or site. It is the only mandatory element.
2. 02
   A one-paragraph summary: A blockquote (> ...) that says what you do, for whom, and where. Write it as a definitive statement an AI could quote: country, city, industry, year founded.
3. 03
   Sections with links: H2 headings (## Services, ## Company) followed by lists of links. Each link is [Page name](URL) followed by a colon and a short description of what the page contains.
4. 04
   Only what matters: Services, pricing, coverage, FAQs, case studies, contact. Leave out login pages, legal boilerplate and anything you would not want quoted.

A template you can copy

Replace the example below with your own company, pages and descriptions:

# Acme Logistics

> Acme Logistics is a Chilean freight and last-mile delivery company serving Santiago, Valparaíso and Concepción since 2014.

## Services
- [Freight services](https://acme.cl/en/services): Road freight and warehousing, with pricing model and coverage
- [Last-mile delivery](https://acme.cl/en/last-mile): Same-day delivery for e-commerce brands

## Company
- [About us](https://acme.cl/en/about): Who we are, team and certifications
- [FAQ](https://acme.cl/en/faq): Answers on rates, insurance and tracking

Where to put it

The file must be reachable at https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt, at the root, not inside a folder or a subpage. Whoever manages your site can do it in a few minutes: on a custom site, add the file to the public folder; on WordPress, upload it to the root directory through your hosting file manager or FTP (some SEO plugins also generate it); on site builders that do not allow root files, ask your provider or developer for a redirect from /llms.txt to a page that holds the same text.

How to check it works

• Open https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt in a browser: you should see the plain text, not a 404 or your homepage.
• The server should answer with HTTP 200 and a non-empty body.
• Every link inside should open. Broken links defeat the purpose.
• In Lumen, go to Actions, Brand foundations and press Recheck: the "llms.txt published" item turns green automatically once the file responds.

Keep it alive

Update the file when you launch a service, change prices or publish a major page. An outdated llms.txt is worse than none because it points models to the wrong information. A quarterly review is enough for most businesses. To see whether the change moves your visibility, track it in GEO Actions.