A plain-English look at the llms.txt proposal, what it's meant to do, and how much attention it deserves in your AI search strategy.
The short answer
llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file, placed at the root of a website, that lists and summarizes a site's most useful pages for large language models. It's optional, and support across AI platforms is inconsistent.
How it differs from robots.txt
robots.txt tells crawlers what they may access. llms.txt is intended as a curated guide to helpful content. One controls access; the other offers a summary.
Should you add one?
It's quick to create and low-risk, so it can be a reasonable extra for some sites. But it's not a substitute for the fundamentals: helpful content, clear structure, consistent facts and a technically healthy website.
Where to focus instead
Spend most of your effort on answer-first pages, accurate business information and structured data. Those improvements help people, traditional search and AI tools at the same time.
See AI Pages for our approach.