---
title: "What is llms.txt? The AI crawler standard explained"
description: "llms.txt is a proposed standard giving AI models a readable summary of your website — like robots.txt does for crawlers. Explanation + example."
url: "https://fwrd.digital/glossary/llms-txt"
published: "2026-07-12T23:54:33Z"
modified: "2026-07-16T18:45:18Z"
---

# What is llms.txt? The AI crawler standard explained

_Glossary_

## llms.txt: your website, readable for AI.

Robots.txt tells crawlers where they may go. llms.txt tells AI models what your site is about. Small file, growing importance.

## Why would you want one?

AI search engines and assistants draw their answers from web content. An llms.txt makes it easy for them to summarise and cite your site correctly — resulting in better representation in AI answers. It costs nothing and can only help.

## What does it look like?

An llms.txt is plain markdown: a title, a short description of the site and a grouped list of links with one line of context per page. Larger sites add an llms-full.txt with the full content as plain text. This site has one itself — see fwrd.digital/llms.txt for a live example.

## Status of the standard

llms.txt is a proposal, not an official standard — no AI vendor has guaranteed support. But the cost is zero, adoption is growing and the major crawlers demonstrably fetch the file. Comparable to the early days of sitemap.xml: early adopters benefit longest.

## Findable in Google ==and in AI==.

FWRD sites ship the modern SEO foundation as standard.