What is llms.txt, and does my small business need one?

What is an llms.txt file?

A short text file written in Markdown, the plain-text format that uses # for headings and - for lists. It sits at the top of your site, next to robots.txt, and gives an AI tool a summary of who you are and a hand-picked list of links to your most useful pages. Only the title line is required. A one-line summary and sections of links are optional.

Here is what the lines of one look like, for a made-up plumber. It is an example, not a template we claim works better than another.

Who proposed llms.txt, and who uses it?

Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI proposed it in September 2024, and the proposal lives at llmstxt.org. It was designed mainly for technical documentation, so that coding assistants could read a software library's manual without wading through menus and scripts.

When we asked on 2026-10-17, Claude, citing the proposal's site, said documentation platforms now generate one automatically and that OpenAI, Anthropic and Google publish them for their developer documentation. A critic it cited points out that the file was never pitched as a way to rank higher in search or in AI answers.

How is llms.txt different from robots.txt and a sitemap?

An llms.txt blocks nothing and allows nothing. If you want to keep an AI crawler out, or let one in, that is robots.txt's job. And put nothing private in it: it is a public file anyone can read.

Does llms.txt really work?

Nobody has shown that it does for a small business. Google says the ordinary SEO basics are what count for its AI features, and ChatGPT, citing Google's guide, told us on 2026-10-17 that llms.txt has no positive or negative effect on ranking in Google Search. Gemini told us that most consumer AI search tools, ChatGPT search and Perplexity among them, do not need it to read or summarize a site.

That does not make it useless. It costs almost nothing, Google's AI Mode told us a basic one will not hurt, and if an AI tool does read it, it gets your facts in your words. That is why we call it hygiene: cheap, harmless, unproven.

Is llms.txt needed for a small business website?

No. We asked ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude and Google's AI Mode "What is llms.txt and does my small business website need one?" on 2026-10-17. Four said most small businesses do not need one, and the fifth called it optional and low priority.

Your time goes further on what the engines named instead:

• A page for each service you offer and each area you serve, in real text.
• Your name, address, phone and hours, the same on your site, your Google Business Profile and Bing Places.
• A complete Google Business Profile, and reviews.
• Plain answers on the page to the questions customers ask.
• A site that loads quickly on a phone, with no login in the way.

Then, if it is easy, add an llms.txt. The rest, in order, is in How do I get my business to show up on ChatGPT?

What does Camello do with llms.txt?

On WordPress, Camello can write one for you as one of the changes it proposes. Like every change, it waits for your click: you read the text first, you click Apply, and the plugin serves it at yoursite.com/llms.txt from your own site. It only adds lines and never deletes what is already there. If your site already has an llms.txt file of its own, the plugin leaves it alone and gives you the text to paste yourself. You can undo it.

We do not claim it does anything. There is no reliable way to see whether an AI tool read the file, so it ships as hygiene with no verdict: never "won", never counted as a win. What the verdicts mean explains the words we use for the changes we can measure. Camello's own site has one, at camello.ai/llms.txt.