# What is llms.txt? llms.txt, explained

> robots.txt, but for LLM context.

llms.txt is a proposed standard (llmstxt.org, 2024) for a site to expose a concise Markdown overview of itself at /llms.txt — what the site is, what it covers, and which pages matter most. A deeper /llms-full.txt variant carries the full content corpus. It's the canonical surface for LLMO.

## How llms.txt differs from LLMO, GEO, robots.txt

robots.txt controls crawl policy. llms.txt provides ingest-friendly context — a curated Markdown overview of the site for LLMs that have already been allowed to read.

## How Mentionwell handles llms.txt

- Site-wide /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt published at the canonical paths on every Mentionwell deployment.
- Per-article .md mirrors at <path>.md so any LLM can ingest a clean Markdown version of any page.
- Files are regenerated on every publish so the corpus stays fresh.

## Frequently asked questions about llms.txt

### What is llms.txt?

A proposed standard (llmstxt.org) for a site to publish a concise Markdown overview of itself at /llms.txt, so AI assistants can quickly understand what the site covers and which pages matter most.

### Is llms.txt a real standard?

It's a proposal authored by Jeremy Howard (Answer.AI) in 2024. It's not an official W3C or IETF standard, but it has wide adoption across documentation sites, SaaS products, and AI-native publishers.

### What's the difference between llms.txt and llms-full.txt?

llms.txt is the short index — site description and key links. llms-full.txt carries the full content corpus in Markdown for deeper ingestion.

## See also

- [LLMO — LLM Optimization](https://mentionwell.com/llmo): Be reachable, parseable, ingestible.
- [GEO — Generative Engine Optimization](https://mentionwell.com/geo): Be the cited source.
- [robots.txt — robots.txt for AI](https://mentionwell.com/robots-txt): Crawl policy in the AI era.

## Sources

- [The /llms.txt file proposal](https://llmstxt.org/) — Jeremy Howard, Answer.AI, 2024 · Original llms.txt specification.

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Canonical URL: https://mentionwell.com/llms-txt
Live HTML version: https://mentionwell.com/llms-txt
Site index for AI ingestion: https://mentionwell.com/llms.txt
Full reference: https://mentionwell.com/llms-full.txt