You already have a robots.txt that tells search engines where they can go. An llms.txt does the opposite job for AI assistants: it tells them where they should go, and what they will find. It is one of the cheapest improvements you can make to how ChatGPT, Perplexity and Claude understand your site.
What it is
llms.txt is a plain-text file, written in Markdown, that lives at the root of your website: yoursite.com/llms.txt. It was proposed in late 2024 as a convention and has been picked up by a growing number of sites and tools since. There is no registry and no approval process. You publish the file, and any assistant that looks for it can read it.
The idea is simple. A full website is a messy thing to read. Menus, footers, cookie banners and pop-ups get in the way. An llms.txt is the version with the noise removed: a short description of the business, followed by a curated list of the pages that matter most, each with a one-line summary.
Why it matters
When an assistant searches the live web to answer a question, it has a limited budget of time and text. It will not read all 200 pages of your site. It will fetch two or three and decide from those. If one of those is an llms.txt that lays out what you do and links straight to your pricing, services and FAQ, you have made its job easy. If it lands on a blog post from 2021 instead, you have not.
Is it guaranteed that every assistant reads it? No. Support varies and changes. But the cost is ten minutes, the downside is zero, and the upside is that the assistants which do read it get the cleanest possible picture of your business.
What goes in it
A good llms.txt has four parts. Keep the whole thing under a page; it is a summary, not a copy of the site.
- A title line with your business name, as a Markdown H1.
- A one-paragraph description in plain language: what you sell, who it is for, where you are, and what makes you different. Write it the way you would introduce yourself at a networking event.
- Sections of links. Group them under H2 headings like Services, Pricing, About and Help. Each link gets a short note after it explaining what the page contains.
- An optional section at the end for pages that are less important, so the assistant knows they exist but can skip them.
A worked example
Here is the shape of one for a fictional studio. Yours will have different sections, but the rhythm is the same: name, one honest paragraph, then the pages that answer customer questions.
# Acme Studio > Acme Studio is a photography and video studio for rent in Dubai Marina. Hourly and daily rates from AED 250, with lighting and backdrops included. Used by product brands, creators and agencies. ## Pricing - [Studio rates](https://acme.studio/pricing): hourly and daily rates, what is included, deposit terms. ## Services - [Studio hire](https://acme.studio/studio): room sizes, equipment list, parking. - [Product photography](https://acme.studio/product-photography): done-for-you shoots with a photographer. ## Help - [FAQ](https://acme.studio/faq): booking, cancellations, what to bring. - [Contact](https://acme.studio/contact): phone, WhatsApp, map.
Mistakes to avoid
The most common mistake is pasting the whole sitemap. An llms.txt with 400 links is as useless as no file at all, because the point was to tell the assistant which pages matter. Pick ten to twenty.
The second is marketing language in the description. "A revolutionary platform reimagining how brands connect" tells an assistant nothing. "A studio you rent by the hour in Dubai Marina" tells it everything. Facts, not slogans.
The third is forgetting to update it. If your pricing page moves, the link in llms.txt should move with it. This is why WebValet hosts and syncs the file for you: it re-reads your site weekly and regenerates the file from what is actually there.
How to publish it
On WordPress, most hosts let you upload a file to the site root through the file manager, or you can use a plugin that serves it. On Webflow, Framer and Shopify, you may not be able to place a file at the root directly; the usual workaround is a redirect from /llms.txt to a hosted copy. On Cloudflare you can serve it from a Worker in a few lines.
If none of that sounds like something you want to do, use the free generator on WebValet. Paste your URL, check the description it drafts from your homepage, and download the file or let WebValet host it at a link you can redirect to. The hosted version updates itself.
Try the free llms.txt generator at /tools/llms-txt-generator. It reads your site's title, description and navigation and drafts the file for you.
What to do after
Publishing the file is step one. Step two is making sure the pages it links to actually answer questions. An llms.txt that points to a pricing page with no prices on it has done half the job. Go through each linked page and ask: if an assistant quoted this page back to a customer, would it answer their question? If not, fix the page, not the file.
Then check back in a month. Run the AI visibility check and look at whether mentions moved. If the assistants are now describing your business accurately, the file is doing its job.