llms.txt Generator

This llms.txt generator gives you a working first draft in seconds. Turning it into a file that actually helps an AI assistant understand your business takes about fifteen minutes of editing. This guide explains exactly how the draft is built, the format the file follows, a before-and-after example, where to upload it, and what to expect from it honestly.

How the draft is built

No AI writes your draft. The generator reads your site and arranges what it finds:

1. It reads your homepage. The business name comes from the homepage’s og:site_name tag, or failing that, the last part of the homepage title (the bit after ” | ” or ” - ”). The one-line summary comes from the homepage meta description.
2. It collects the links on your homepage that point to other pages on your site, and keeps the first 25 different ones.
3. It skips addresses that rarely help: images, PDFs and zip files, addresses containing ? or #, WordPress system paths (anything with wp-), cart, checkout, account and login pages, feeds, and tag and author archives.
4. It opens each page and keeps the ones that answer normally. Pages that error, time out or sit behind a sign-in are dropped, and so are pages with no title.
5. It writes one line per page: the page title (cut at the first ” | ” or ” - ”, so your brand name doesn’t repeat on every line), the address, and the page’s meta description.

That means the draft is only as good as your titles and descriptions. If your homepage has no meta description, the summary line says “The website of” followed by your name, and that’s the first thing to rewrite. Pages that aren’t linked from your homepage won’t appear at all, so add any important ones by hand.

The format, line by line

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a Markdown file at the root of your site. The structure the draft uses, and the one you should keep:

# Business name

> One or two sentences: who you are, what you do, where, for whom.

Optional paragraphs with key facts an assistant should know.

## Section name
- [Page title](https://yoursite.com/page/): what this page answers

## Optional
- [Less important page](https://yoursite.com/other/): note

• The H1 (#) is the business or site name. There should be exactly one.
• The quote line (>) is the summary. It’s the most important line in the file.
• Plain paragraphs after it can hold facts: service area, hours, years in business, what you don’t do.
• Each H2 section (##) groups related links.
• A section called “Optional” has a special meaning in the proposal: links an assistant can skip when it’s short on space.

The generator puts every page under one heading, “Main pages”. Splitting them into meaningful sections is the biggest improvement you can make.

Worked example: Bean & Barrel Coffee

The draft the generator produced:

# Bean & Barrel Coffee

> Shop coffee beans online. Free shipping over $40.

## Main pages
- [Home](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/): Shop coffee beans online. Free shipping over $40.
- [Shop](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/shop/): Shop coffee beans online. Free shipping over $40.
- [Ethiopia Yirgacheffe](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/product/ethiopia-yirgacheffe/)
- [Our Story](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/about/): Learn more about us.
- [Wholesale](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/wholesale/)
- [Brew Guides](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/brew-guides/): Our latest blog posts.
- [Contact](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/contact/)

The repeated description shows the shop page reuses the homepage’s meta description, which is worth fixing on the site itself. After fifteen minutes of editing:

# Bean & Barrel Coffee

> Bean & Barrel is a small-batch coffee roaster in Portland, Oregon. We sell single-origin and blended whole beans online, roasted to order and shipped within two days across the US, and run two cafés in Portland.

We roast every Tuesday and Friday. Free US shipping on orders over $40. Wholesale accounts for cafés and offices.

## Shop
- [All coffee](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/shop/): every bean we roast, with tasting notes, origin and roast level
- [Coffee subscriptions](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/subscriptions/): beans every 1, 2 or 4 weeks; pause or cancel any time
- [Wholesale](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/wholesale/): pricing and minimum orders for cafés and offices

## Brewing guides
- [Brew guides](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/brew-guides/): pour-over, French press, espresso and cold brew ratios and grind sizes

## About and policies
- [Our story](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/about/): who roasts the coffee and where we buy green beans
- [Shipping and returns](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/shipping/): delivery times, costs and freshness guarantee
- [Contact and café locations](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/contact/): addresses, hours and phone

## Optional
- [Ethiopia Yirgacheffe](https://beanandbarrelcoffee.com/product/ethiopia-yirgacheffe/): our best-selling single origin

The summary now answers the questions people actually ask assistants: what is it, where is it, do they ship, how fast.

What to include and leave out

Aim for the 10 to 30 pages that answer most questions about your business.

Where to upload it

The file must live at the root of your site, at exactly yoursite.com/llms.txt.

• WordPress: upload it with your host’s file manager or FTP to the same folder that holds wp-config.php. Or let the free Bridge plugin write and serve it for you (see below).
• Other hosts and site builders: put it in the folder that’s published as your site’s root, often called public.
• Save it as plain text in UTF-8, named llms.txt. Watch for editors that save it as llms.txt.txt or turn quotes into curly ones.

Then open yoursite.com/llms.txt in a browser, and run the Website SEO Checker. Its llms.txt check passes only when the file answers normally and is plain text. If your server sends your theme’s “page not found” page instead, the check will tell you.

Common mistakes

• Publishing the draft unedited. A summary that says “Shop coffee beans online” tells an assistant almost nothing.
• Blocking the AI crawlers that would read it. An llms.txt behind a robots.txt block is pointless. Check with the AI crawler checker.
• Letting it go stale. Renamed or deleted pages leave broken links in the file. Review it when you change your menu or services.
• Putting it in a subfolder. yoursite.com/files/llms.txt won’t be found.

Treat llms.txt as a cover letter, not a sitemap. A sitemap lists everything. llms.txt points to what matters and says it plainly.

What to expect from it

llms.txt is cheap to add and easy to keep, but no AI assistant promises to read it. Getting recommended still depends on crawler access, pages that answer questions clearly, and other sites mentioning you. Our guide on how to get recommended by ChatGPT covers those, and the glossary entries on llms.txt and generative engine optimization explain the wider idea.

To see whether assistants mention you before and after, AI Visibility asks ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews questions about your services and area and records who they name. The Site Audit checks for llms.txt along with AI crawler access, and on WordPress RankThat writes and serves llms.txt for you through the free Bridge plugin, with undo.