Protocol
llms.txt
Also: llms txt, LLMs.txt
Answer.AI proposed the format in September 2024. A typical file lists what the organization is, its key pages and a few plain facts. It costs little to publish and does no harm, and some developer documentation sites use it so coding tools can find their docs.
It does not control crawling (robots.txt does that) and it does not change how AI apps rank or cite a site. If an AI app is not naming a brand, the cause is almost always elsewhere: what the brand's own pages say, and what the third party sources the app trusts say about it.
Sources
- llms.txt was proposed by Answer.AI in September 2024 (Answer.AI, llmstxt.org).
- Google's guide to AI features in Search says Search does not use llms.txt or other AI text files (Google Search Central, updated 10 Jul 2026).