What is llms.txt and do I need it?

llms.txt is a plain-text file at your domain root that tells AI engines what your site offers and which pages matter most. If you want AI crawlers to read your site accurately, you need one; Citably generates and deploys it for you.

Think of it as robots.txt for meaning rather than permissions. Where robots.txt tells crawlers what they may fetch, llms.txt tells AI systems what your site is: who you are, what you offer, and which pages carry the answers. Engines that read it get a clean, curated map instead of inferring your structure page by page.

The file lives at your domain root, yourdomain.com/llms.txt, and is ordinary text: a short description of the brand followed by your most important pages with one-line summaries. No markup, no build step, nothing to maintain by hand once generation is automated.

Citably generates yours from your crawled site and brand profile, so the summary matches what your pages actually say. On a connected WordPress site it deploys straight to the root; without a connection you download the file and upload it like any static asset. Regenerate it when your site changes meaningfully, new product lines, big content additions, so the map stays current.

Do you need it? If AI visibility matters to you at all, yes: it is the cheapest correct-attribution insurance available. It will not create citations by itself, but it makes every engine that reads your site more likely to describe you accurately, and it pairs naturally with deployed content and instant indexing.

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