An llms.txt file
What we check
We ask for /llms.txt and report whether it’s there. It counts as present if it answers with a 200, is served as plain text or Markdown, and isn’t empty. An HTML page at that address — usually a “not found” page that answered 200 — doesn’t count.
This check is information only: it’s reported, never scored. Whether llms.txt helps at all is still an open question, so it doesn’t move your Legibility score either way.
Why it matters
llms.txt is a proposed convention: a short Markdown file at the root of a site that summarizes what the site is and points to its most useful pages, written for language models rather than people. The idea is that a model can read one small file instead of crawling everything.
So far, none of the big AI companies has said its crawlers use it, which is why we don’t score it. But people ask about it, so we tell you whether you have one.
How to pass
There’s nothing you need to do. If you want one anyway, it’s cheap to add:
- Write a short Markdown file: your name, a one-line summary, and links to the pages that matter.
# Example > Example makes scheduling software for small clinics. ## Pages - [Product](https://example.com/product): what it does - [Pricing](https://example.com/pricing): plans and prices - [About](https://example.com/about): who we are - Publish it at
https://example.com/llms.txt, served astext/plainortext/markdown.