llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-markdown file at a site's root that gives AI assistants a structured summary of the site: what the company is, what matters, and where the substance lives. Like robots.txt for permissions or sitemap.xml for URLs, llms.txt is the entry point an LLM reads first.
In context
The llms.txt convention exists because HTML pages are a noisy way for a language model to learn what a site offers. A good llms.txt opens with a one-line summary, then lists the site’s key pages with one-line descriptions, in plain markdown a model can ingest in a single read. A companion llms-full.txt can carry full page content.
For an ecommerce brand, llms.txt is one of the cheapest GEO wins available: it tells every assistant that reads it exactly what the brand sells, for whom, and where the citable pages are. Veristyle publishes its own at /llms.txt — and generates one for merchant storefronts as part of its GEO product.
Related
llms.txt governs what assistants understand; robots.txt governs what LLM crawlers may fetch. You need both — see AI crawler access for fashion ecommerce.