llms.txt checker

What llms.txt is, and what it is not

llms.txt is a plain Markdown file at the root of a site, proposed at llmstxt.org as a short guide for language models: who you are, and where your best documents live. Coding agents and some assistants read it to find documentation without crawling everything. It is a proposal, not a standard that any search engine requires.

Be careful with claims in either direction. Google has said it does not use llms.txt for Search, and it neither helps nor harms there. No one has shown that adding one makes assistants cite you more. So this page treats a missing file as information, never as a failure, and never lets it change a level.

The format we check against

• The first line is a single H1 with the name of the site or project: # Name.
• An optional blockquote follows with a one-sentence summary.
• Optional paragraphs of plain notes may come next, with no headings.
• Then H2 sections, each holding a list of links in the form - [Title](https://example.com/page): what it is.
• A section called Optional marks links a reader short of room may skip.

# Example Co

> Example Co makes a small DNS tool and publishes its docs for developers.

## Docs

- [Getting started](https://example.com/docs/start): install and first query
- [API reference](https://example.com/docs/api): every endpoint

## Optional

- [Changelog](https://example.com/changelog): release notes

We report whether the address answers with a Markdown file and not a web page, whether it starts with a title, how many sections and links it has, and any list item that is a bare address instead of a link. We also note whether llms-full.txt, the long version, exists. We read the file only; we do not open the links inside it.

What else this page shows

The same run covers the rest of the AI readiness checklist, so you can see llms.txt in context. Open the other tabs for the full list of checks, the crawler matrix and the first text a crawler reads. The pieces that matter more than llms.txt for most sites are an accessible robots.txt, content in the first response and a sitemap.

Writing a useful one

• Keep it short. Link to the pages a newcomer needs first, not to everything.
• Write each note for a reader who has not seen your site, in plain words.
• Link to Markdown pages where you have them. They cost a reader far fewer tokens than HTML.
• Keep it current. A file that points to removed pages is worse than none.