llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain markdown convention published at llmstxt.org. The file opens with the site name as a heading and a one-line summary, then lists links grouped under short headings. A language model can read it in one pass without parsing any HTML.
The Digital Karma Federation added llms.txt on September 22, 2026. The server logs showed /llms.txt requested 2,116 times across the portfolio in 35 days, and roughly 960 of those requests got a 404 because almost no site had one. Every site now generates one each night from its manifest and catalog. A site that wrote its own by hand keeps it.
In Practice
This site's /llms.txt lists its machine-readable endpoints, its datasets, its main pages, and its sibling sites, each as a markdown link with a short description.
Worth Knowing
llms.txt is not a web standard, and no major AI company has said it relies on the file. Most of the requests in the logs came from tools and agents that could not be identified. The named AI crawlers mostly requested it on sites that already had one.