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llms.txt checker

Reads your llms.txt against the emerging convention and finds what is malformed, missing a title or summary, or would leave a tool with a link it cannot follow.

This is one of the checks inside Growth Score

Growth Score runs it with the rest on your live site, scores the result and shows what to fix first.

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Why it matters

Why this is worth checking

txt is a proposed way to hand an AI tool a short summary and a ranked list of links instead of making it guess from a full page.

It is still voluntary and unproven: no major AI company has confirmed its crawlers read the file. Being well formed costs nothing either way, and a malformed one is worse than none.

What it reads

What it looks at

  • A name and one-line summary first
  • Full markdown links, every one
  • Empty sections and duplicate links
  • Enough here for a tool to follow

Reading a result

What a finding means

Each finding says what was seen. This is what it tells you about the page.

No title or summary firstThe file skips the opening a tool looks for, so it has less to go on.
A link without a full addressA tool reading the file cannot follow it to the page.
Empty sections or repeatsThe file reads as padding. Cut it down to the pages that matter.

Common fixes

What to change first

The fixes that come up most, in the order they usually pay off.

Open with name and summaryStart with one heading naming the site and one line saying what it is.
Use full markdown linksWrite each entry as a titled link with the complete https address.
Keep it shortList the pages a reader needs first, under a few plain headings.

In Growth Score

Feeds Answerability

Whether AI answers can read, quote and cite your content. txt exists and whether your pages are marked up to be quoted.

This checks structure against the community convention. It cannot confirm any AI company actually reads the file, because none has said so yet.

Glossary

Terms behind this check

llms.txtA proposed plain-text file at a site's root that points AI systems to its most useful content.AI visibilityHow often and how favorably your brand appears in answers produced by AI systems.Quotable answerA self-contained sentence or short passage that can be lifted out as a complete answer.

Go deeper

Guides that cover it

Search for a new siteWhat moves a new domain, in what order, and what to skip so early effort is not wasted.Get cited in AI answersLet the right crawlers in, make pages easy to quote, then check visits.

FAQ

Questions

Do AI companies read llms.txt?

None has confirmed that its crawlers do. It is a voluntary convention, so treat it as cheap preparation, not a ranking lever.

Can a bad llms.txt hurt?

A malformed one can point tools at broken links. A short, correct file costs nothing.

Does the check change my site?

No. It only reads. Nothing is installed, edited or sent to your site by a check.

The other 11

The rest of the checks

Run it with the rest

Growth Score reads your whole site, scores it against sites like yours and ranks what to fix.

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