Glossary
What Is llms.txt
llms.txt is a community proposal placing a Markdown content index for large models at the site root.
- Author
- Xingge
- Published
- 2026-11-09
- Updated
- 2026-11-09
- Level
- L2 Reproducible
- Version
- 1.0
Term details
- Name
- What Is llms.txt
- Type
- Glossary
- ID
- llms-txt-en
What Is llms.txt
llms.txt is a community proposal that places a Markdown file at the site root to give large models a content index. It is not a W3C or IETF standard, its crawling effect requires measurement, and no one should claim it is certain to be indexed.
Definition
This site's working definition: llms.txt is a site description file generated by hand or at build time, listing core pages, the evidence index, and citation suggestions in a fixed structure to lower the model's comprehension cost.
This site generates it from the content manifest during the build, without manual maintenance, so that it cannot drift from what is actually published.
Boundaries: what it is easily confused with
| Easily confused concept | Key difference |
|---|---|
| robots.txt | robots governs whether crawling is allowed; llms.txt is only a guide |
| sitemap.xml | A sitemap is a crawl entry point; llms.txt is a semantic summary |
| Official standard | llms.txt is a community proposal with no standards status |
Common misconceptions
- Treating llms.txt as an indexing switch. It is a guide file and does not change crawl permissions.
- Maintaining it by hand until links expire. It should be generated by the build.
- Claiming indexing is certain once it is provided. The effect requires measurement and depends on model and platform policy.
Basis and verification
This definition is this site's working definition, marked L2. The actual file structure and generation rules are on the machine-readable layer method page in the method index, and experimental status is in the research index.
Review cycle: 180 days, moved earlier when the community proposal status changes.
Related sections: glossary index, method index, metric index, editorial policy.