What Is llms.txt? How to Set It Up on WordPress (2026 Guide)

In September 2024, fast.ai's Jeremy Howard introduced llms.txt, a proposal that aims to give AI models a plain-text map of a website. No one paid much attention initially, but then major companies like Cloudflare, Stripe, Anthropic, Vercel, Supabase, and Zapier began using it. Over 780 websites now have an llms.txt file, with three community directories tracking adoption.

To understand an AI model's perspective, imagine ChatGPT or Perplexity trying to answer a question about your product. They crawl your HTML, which includes headers, footers, navigation menus, and various widgets. This noise makes it difficult to identify the important content. llms.txt simplifies this process by providing a structured Markdown file (located at yoursite.com/llms.txt) that acts as a curated table of contents for AI models.

The format is simple: it includes a one-line summary of the site, a brief description, and H2 sections with links to key pages. For example, Stripe organizes their llms.txt by product category, while Cloudflare structures theirs by product line. Anthropic goes a step further by maintaining both an llms.txt and an llms-full.txt, which contains the full Markdown content of their key pages.

While some websites report no measurable change or even a decline in AI traffic after implementing llms.txt, early adopters have a clear advantage. With only 0.3% of top websites having an llms.txt file, first-movers can establish a baseline that later standards build upon. Setting up llms.txt takes only a few minutes and has no downsides.