llms.txt step by step: what to write so AI understands your business

An llms.txt file is a short summary of your business for ChatGPT, Claude and other AI tools. I’ll show you what belongs in it, how to write it in 20 minutes and how to get it onto your website – on WordPress, Shoptet or a custom site.

In the article How to get recommended by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity I only mentioned llms.txt as a small bonus. Today we’ll prepare it properly – with a ready template you can rewrite for your business.

What llms.txt is and what to expect from it

llms.txt is a plain text file at yourcompany.com/llms.txt. Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI proposed it in 2024 as a “reading guide” to a website for language models. A normal page is full of menus, footers, cookie banners and scripts. llms.txt gives AI the essentials in one place: who you are, what you offer, for how much, where you operate and where to find details.

Let’s be honest: it is not an official standard. Google has said it does not use it for search, and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic promise that their bots read it for every answer. So why bother?

• it takes 20 minutes and cannot break anything
• more and more AI tools and assistants use it when they load a website at a user’s request
• it forces you to write exactly what you want AI to say about you – and the same text is useful on your website too

What it looks like

The file is written in Markdown and has a simple structure:

1. A heading with the business name – the line starts with #.
2. One or two sentences of summary – the line starts with >.
3. Short paragraphs of facts: services, prices, service area, contact.
4. Sections with links to the most important pages – a heading starting with ## and a list of links with a short description.

Template to rewrite

This is what llms.txt could look like for a café. Rewrite it for your business and keep the #, > and - characters at the start of lines.

# Mandľa Café
> Specialty coffee and breakfast in the centre of Detva. Open daily from 7:00.

We offer specialty coffee, homemade cakes, breakfast until 11:00
and catering for companies of up to 40 people.
Prices: coffee from €2.20, breakfast from €6.90, catering from €9 per person.
Address: Námestie SNP 1, 962 12 Detva, Slovakia
Phone: +421 900 000 000, email: info@kaviarenmandla.sk

## Main pages
- [Menu and prices](https://kaviarenmandla.sk/menu): current menu
- [Catering](https://kaviarenmandla.sk/catering): offer for companies and parties
- [Contact](https://kaviarenmandla.sk/kontakt): address, map, opening hours

## Optional
- [Blog](https://kaviarenmandla.sk/blog): recipes and news

5 rules for a good llms.txt

• Write facts, not advertising. “The best café in the country” doesn’t help AI, “breakfast until 11:00 from €6.90” does.
• Include numbers – prices “from”, delivery times, years in business, number of projects.
• Say where you operate. For local services, the city and surroundings matter more than anything else.
• Only link to pages that really exist and are up to date.
• The details must match your website and your Google Business Profile. Conflicting sources confuse AI.

How to get it onto your website

• Custom or static website: upload llms.txt via FTP to the main folder of the website, next to index.html. That’s exactly how I have it on ambidesign.eu.
• WordPress: the simplest way is to upload the file via FTP or your hosting’s file manager to the folder that contains wp-config.php. There are also plugins that generate llms.txt – always read and edit the result.
• Shoptet, Wix and similar platforms: they usually don’t allow uploading your own file to the root. At least put the same text on your “About us” page – for AI, the content matters, not the file name.

Checking is easy: open yourcompany.com/llms.txt in a browser. You must see plain text, not a 404 error and not a page of your website.

What llms.txt won’t fix

llms.txt does not replace content on your website, reviews or mentions of you elsewhere. And if you block AI bots in robots.txt or in your hosting firewall, they won’t read the file. More in the article AI bots in robots.txt, firewalls and Cloudflare.

Want to know whether your website has llms.txt and whether AI bots can see it at all? Run the free website test with the AI visibility area – you’ll have the result in a minute.