Guide

llms.txt for WordPress

What it is, what it does and doesn't do, a template you can copy, and how to check that yours is live.

What llms.txt is

An llms.txt file is a Markdown document served at /llms.txt. It gives an AI model a clean, curated starting point for your site: who you are, and the pages that matter, without making it wade through navigation, scripts and cookie banners. The proposal comes from llmstxt.org.

Does it actually work?

Honestly: it is a proposal, not a standard, and there is no public guarantee that any particular AI product reads it. What is measurable is adoption. In our scan of 2,080 top WordPress sites, 29% already publish one. It costs nothing, and it does no harm, so most sites should have one.

Format

A title, a one-line summary in a blockquote, then sections of links with short descriptions:

# Example Charity

> Example Charity provides free meals to families in Atlanta, GA. Founded 2012, run by volunteers.

## Key pages

- [About us](https://example.org/about): Our mission, team and history
- [How to donate](https://example.org/donate): One-off and monthly giving
- [Volunteer](https://example.org/volunteer): Roles, times and how to sign up

## Optional

- [Annual report 2025](https://example.org/reports/2025): Financials and impact

Adding it to WordPress

Create llms.txt as plain UTF-8 text using the format above.
Upload it to the folder that holds wp-config.php, by SFTP or your host's file manager.
Open yourdomain.com/llms.txt in a browser. You should see the text, not a 404 page and not your theme.
If a caching plugin or CDN serves a stale 404, purge it.

Some SEO plugins can generate and serve the file for you; check yours before uploading one by hand.

Common mistakes

Listing every URL. Curate. A short list of your best pages beats a sitemap.
Serving HTML instead of Markdown or plain text, often a theme 404 page returning status 200.
Blocking AI crawlers in robots.txt and then publishing llms.txt for them. Make the two agree: robots.txt AI crawler guide.

FAQ

What is llms.txt?

A plain Markdown file at the root of your site (/llms.txt) that gives language models a short, curated summary of the site and links to its most useful pages. It was proposed in 2024 by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI.

Is llms.txt an official standard?

No. It is a community proposal, not an IETF or W3C standard, and AI companies have not all committed to reading it. Publishing one is cheap and harmless; do not expect guaranteed results.

Where does the file go on WordPress?

In the web root, next to wp-config.php, so that it is served at yourdomain.com/llms.txt. Upload it by SFTP or your host's file manager, or use a plugin that serves it.

Does llms.txt replace robots.txt?

No. robots.txt tells crawlers what they may fetch. llms.txt tells models what is worth reading. They do different jobs.

Is your llms.txt live?

Paste your URL. We check for llms.txt, AI-crawler rules and schema.org markup, live.

Scan your site