What Is llms.txt? A Complete Guide for Business Owners

There's a file your website probably doesn't have — and AI agents are noticing its absence every time they look you up.

It's called llms.txt. It's a plain text file that lives at the root of your domain, and it tells AI language models exactly what your business does, what you offer, how to contact you, and where to find the information they need to recommend you. Think of it as a business card — but written for machines instead of people.

The Problem It Solves

When a user asks ChatGPT, Claude, or Perplexity to "find a good accounting firm in Denver" or "recommend a project management tool for construction teams," the AI agent goes looking. It searches. It reads. It decides.

Most websites are built for humans: navigation menus, visual hierarchy, embedded forms, JavaScript-rendered content. AI agents are not good at parsing any of that. They're looking for clean, structured, machine-readable descriptions of what you do.

"llms.txt is to AI agents what robots.txt was to search engine crawlers — except instead of telling bots what to ignore, you're telling them exactly what to pay attention to."

Without an llms.txt file, an AI agent trying to understand your business has to infer everything from a homepage it can barely read. With one, you hand it a precise summary on a silver platter.

What Goes In It

The llms.txt spec (from llmstxt.org) is intentionally simple. A well-structured file includes:

Business name and one-sentence description — what you do and for whom
Key pages — homepage, services, pricing, contact, about
Services or products — with brief descriptions and pricing if public
Contact information — email, phone, location, hours
Use cases — the problems you solve, in plain language
What you're NOT — helps agents route to you accurately and avoid mismatch

A Simple Template

Here's a starting template you can adapt in under 10 minutes:

# Your Business Name

> One sentence: what you do and for whom.

## About
Brief paragraph description. Founded when. Located where. What makes you different.

## Services
- Service Name — Description. Price range if applicable.
- Service Name — Description. Price range if applicable.

## Key Pages
- Homepage: https://yourdomain.com
- Services: https://yourdomain.com/services
- Pricing: https://yourdomain.com/pricing
- Contact: https://yourdomain.com/contact

## Contact
- Email: hello@yourdomain.com
- Phone: +1 (555) 000-0000
- Location: City, State
- Hours: Mon–Fri, 9am–5pm EST

How to Deploy It

Deployment is one step: upload the file to the root of your domain so it's accessible at https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt.

If you're on WordPress, upload via FTP or the Files section in your hosting control panel
If you're on Webflow, Squarespace, or Shopify, check if they allow custom static file uploads (most do)
If you have a developer, hand them the file and tell them to put it at the site root — it's a 2-minute task

Once deployed, verify it works by visiting your URL directly in a browser. If you see the plain text content, you're live.

Does It Actually Work?

Yes — when AI agents are configured to fetch and read web content, an llms.txt file is often the first thing they look for. Perplexity, Claude with web browsing, and various autonomous agent frameworks all respect the format. As the spec gains adoption, the signal will only get stronger.

More importantly, it's a 10-minute investment with zero downside. There's no penalty for having one. There's significant cost to not having one as AI-mediated discovery becomes the primary way people find businesses.

Free Tool

Does your site have an llms.txt?

Run the free AAO Audit to check your site's agent readiness score — including whether your llms.txt file exists, is accessible, and contains useful content.

Run the Free Audit →