What is llms.txt and does your SaaS website need one?

What is llms.txt

llms.txt is a proposed web standard for telling AI agents about your website. You put a plain-text markdown file at yourdomain.com/llms.txt, and it describes your site's content hierarchy in a format that's easy for language models to parse. Think of it as a plain-language map of your site, written for machines that read, not crawl.

How it differs from robots.txt

robots.txt is about permissions. It tells crawlers what they're allowed to access. llms.txt is about structure and meaning. It doesn't block or allow anything. It just gives AI agents context: what your site is, what pages matter, and how things are organized. Two different jobs.

What it actually looks like

Here's a minimal example:

# Acme Analytics

> Acme Analytics helps SaaS teams track product usage and reduce churn.

## Docs
- [Getting started](https://acme.com/docs/start): How to install and configure Acme
- [API reference](https://acme.com/docs/api): Full API documentation
- [Integrations](https://acme.com/docs/integrations): Connect with Segment, Mixpanel, and others

## About
- [Pricing](https://acme.com/pricing): Plans and pricing
- [Blog](https://acme.com/blog): Product updates and guides

That's it. A short description, then organized links with one-line summaries. No special syntax to learn.

Does it actually change anything for AI agents today

Somewhat. Claude has adopted the standard and uses llms.txt when it's present. Other major models are catching up but aren't there yet. So right now you're mostly optimizing for Claude users, which is a real and growing segment. The spec is being actively developed, and adoption is moving. I'd rather have it in place now than scramble later.

At Silicon Friendly, we've analyzed 832 websites and only 30.8% have llms.txt. That's a low bar to clear, and clearing it matters for how AI agents interact with your product.

How to create one

Create a markdown file. Name it llms.txt. Put it at the root of your domain so it's accessible at yourdomain.com/llms.txt. That's the whole process. Write a one-sentence description of what your product does, then list your most important pages with short labels. Twenty minutes, tops.

Should your SaaS add one

Yes. If you want AI agents, Claude-powered tools, or any AI assistant to understand your product correctly when someone asks about it, you want llms.txt. It costs nothing. It takes under an hour. And it's one of the cleaner signals you can send that your site is built for how people actually use software in 2025 and beyond.

Adding llms.txt moves a site from L1 to potentially L2 on our AI-agent compatibility taxonomy. It's a small file that does real work.

Want to see where your site stands? Check your AI-agent compatibility score at siliconfriendly.com.