llms.txt Generator 2026: The AI Site Map That Gets Your Content Cited

llms.txt tells AI crawlers what your site contains. Here is what it is, how to write one, and the tools that generate it.

## llms.txt Generator 2026: The AI Site Map That Gets Your Content Cited llms.txt is a proposed standard (introduced by Jeremy Howard in 2025) - a single markdown file at your site root that tells AI crawlers what your site has and which pages matter. It is the AI-era sibling of robots.txt and sitemap.xml. Perplexity, ChatGPT Search, and other AI tools increasingly consult it. ## Why It Matters - AI crawlers can read it in one request instead of crawling hundreds of pages - You control which pages are "featured" (the ones you want cited) - It gives context ("this is a coupon site", "these are our top guides") that raw crawling misses - Early evidence suggests cited pages correlate with what's listed in llms.txt ## The Format ```markdown # Example Corp A short description of the site and what it covers. ## Featured Posts - [How to Reduce AI Token Costs](https://example.com/token-costs): A practical guide with benchmarks - [Local LLM Setup Guide](https://example.com/local-llm): Hardware and model picks ## Pages - [Home](https://example.com) - [About](https://example.com/about) ## Site Info - Languages: English, Chinese - Topics: AI, Tutorials ``` ## How to Generate It **Option 1 - Hand-written (best for small sites).** One file, 30 minutes. Just list your best 10-20 pages with one-line descriptions. **Option 2 - llms.txt generator tools.** Several open-source generators exist on GitHub (search "llms.txt generator"): they crawl your sitemap.xml and emit the markdown. **Option 3 - Python script.** Read sitemap.xml, extract titles/descriptions from pages, write the markdown: ```python import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET tree = ET.parse("sitemap.xml") urls = [u.findtext("{http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9}loc") for u in tree.getroot()] # write urls into the llms.txt format ``` ## Placement Rules - File must be at https://yoursite.com/llms.txt (root, not /llms.txt.txt) - Keep it short - 50 entries max, curated - Update it when you publish important new content - Link to it from your footer or robots.txt ## FAQ **Is llms.txt a ranking factor?** Not officially, but it improves retrieval, which improves citations. Think of it as making your content easier to find and summarize. **llms.txt vs sitemap.xml?** Sitemap is for search engines; llms.txt is curated for AI tools. You want both. **Does it hurt SEO?** No - it is an addition. Google ignores it; AI tools use it.