Agent Wranglers

AGT-43Optional

Give AI tools a site guide

Publish /llms.txt, a short Markdown guide to your site for AI tools. Give the site's name, a one-line summary, and links to the Markdown version of each important page.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Follow the format at llmstxt.org. Start with # Name and a > summary line, then a short paragraph. Then add ## sections with - Title: description lines. A section named ## Optional holds links an agent may skip. Give the size of any file over 100 KB next to its link, and say when it is worth fetching. Build it from your page list, so it never lists a missing page. An agent reads the whole file before it chooses, so keep it a map, not an index. On a large site, link each section's overview page, and let that page list its own chapters. Give the site levels, where each page lists the next level one line per item, so an agent reads only the branch it needs. Start every Markdown copy with one line that links to llms.txt and to the page above it. Then an agent that lands on a deep page from a search result still reaches everything. Send an agent with a problem to one page that lists every topic, and let it choose by meaning. A language model matches meaning better than word search does. Offer search as a shortcut for terms the agent already knows. Link the file from visible text in the page body too. Many fetch tools drop the head and the response headers, so a link there is the only one an older agent sees. llms.txt is a community proposal, not a standard. Google has said it does not use it. A June 2026 Ahrefs study of about 38,000 sites with the file found 97% got no request for it in May 2026. Most named fetchers were GPTBot and coding agents such as Claude Code. Publish it when developers or their coding agents read your pages.

Examples

Plain text example

# Example Co

> Example Co fixes leaky roofs in Springfield, same week.

We are a family roofing firm. Book a free inspection online.

## Pages

- [Services](https://example.com/services.md): What we fix and how
- [Contact](https://example.com/contact.md): Phone, email and booking

How to check

Fetch it. It answers 200 as text/markdown or text/plain, starts with one # heading, is under 24 KB, and every linked page answers 200. The home page links to it inside <main>. A test walks the Markdown links from it and reaches every page in the sitemap within four links. Every page it reaches links back to llms.txt.

Measured

On a reference site, llms.txt listed every chapter and weighed 56 KB. Linking only each playbook's overview, with its chapter names as plain words, cut it from 56 KB to 16 KB.

Sources

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/agents-as-users/ready-for-ai-agents/llms-txt">Agent Wranglers agents as users playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.