Here is the short answer: llms.txt is a small text file you place at the root of your website that tells AI systems, in plain Markdown, who you are, what your site is about, and which pages matter most. For a personal blog or portfolio, a good llms.txt file takes about 20 minutes to write, costs nothing, and gives AI assistants a clean, accurate summary of your work to use when someone asks about you or your topic. It will not make you rank in Google, and most AI crawlers rarely fetch it today, so treat it as a cheap, honest bet rather than a traffic strategy. This guide explains what to put in it, shows a full example for a freelance writer and a designer, and walks through publishing it on the platforms personal sites actually use.
What llms.txt Is, in Plain Terms
Think of llms.txt as the "about this site" page, rewritten for machines. A human visitor reads your homepage, your about page, and a few posts, and forms an impression. An AI system doing the same thing has to crawl your navigation, guess which pages matter, and piece together a picture from scattered HTML. A llms.txt file hands it the picture directly: a short description of the site, a list of the most important pages with one-line summaries, and optionally a longer version with full content.
The format was proposed in September 2024 by Jeremy Howard, and it is deliberately simple. The file is Markdown, it lives at yoursite.com/llms.txt, and it has three parts: a title, an optional summary, and a list of links grouped under headings. There is an optional companion file, llms-full.txt, which contains the full text of your key pages in one document. That is the whole standard. No JSON, no schema, no registration.
For a personal site, that simplicity is the point. You do not need a developer, a plugin, or a budget. You need a text editor and twenty minutes. The file is also human-readable, so a visitor who opens it sees a tidy index of your best work, which is a small bonus on its own.
Why It Matters More for Personal Sites Than for Big Ones
A large company site has hundreds of pages, a sitemap, structured data, and a brand that AI systems already know. A personal blog has twenty posts, a portfolio has twelve projects, and the AI system has probably never heard of you. That information gap is exactly what llms.txt closes. When someone asks an AI assistant "who writes about X" or "show me a designer who does Y," the assistant works from what it can find. A clear llms.txt file is the most direct statement you can make about who you are and what you do.
There is also a practical benefit that has nothing to do with AI. Writing a llms.txt file forces you to decide which pages are your best work. Most personal sites grow by accident: a post here, a project there, a page from three years ago that no longer represents you. The file is a curated list, and curating it is a useful audit. The pages you leave out are often the pages you should update or delete.
Be honest about the limits, though. Log studies published in 2026 found that AI crawlers almost never fetch llms.txt today: one 36-day study recorded 1,687 AI-crawler visits and zero llms.txt requests, and Ahrefs found that 97 percent of llms.txt files got no requests at all. Google's John Mueller has said no AI system currently uses llms.txt. That does not make the file useless. It makes it a low-cost bet on a standard that is gaining support, not a channel you should depend on. Your priority order should stay the same: robots.txt first, then a sitemap, then citable pages that answer real questions, and llms.txt after those. Our guide on whether AI bots actually read llms.txt covers the evidence in full.
What to Put in Your llms.txt File
A personal llms.txt file needs five things, and nothing else. Keep it short. A file that lists everything is no better than a sitemap, and a sitemap is not what this is for.
1. Your Name and a One-Line Description
The first line is a level-one heading with your name or your site's name, followed by a short blockquote that says who you are in one or two sentences. This is the sentence an AI system will use when someone asks about you, so write it the way you would introduce yourself at a conference, not the way a keyword tool would.
2. Your Best Pages, Not All Your Pages
List five to ten pages, grouped under headings like "About," "Best writing," "Projects," or "Services." Each entry is a Markdown link with a short description of what the page contains and why it matters. Pick the pages you would show a potential client or employer. Leave out the rest. If you have fifty posts, link the eight that still represent you.
3. Your Services or Topics
If you take freelance work, say so, and say what kind. "Available for freelance data journalism" is useful information for an AI system answering a hiring question. So is "I write about personal finance for beginners." Be specific. A vague description produces vague answers.
4. How to Contact You
Link your contact page or your email. An AI system that recommends you is only useful if the person asking can reach you. Do not put your bare email address in the file if you worry about spam; a link to a contact page does the same job.
5. What You Do Not Want Included (Optional)
An "Optional" section can list pages you would rather AI systems skipped, such as old posts, personal notes, or drafts that are still public. This is a preference, not a block: a llms.txt file does not stop crawling, and if you need a page kept out of AI training, use robots.txt for that. Our llms.txt vs robots.txt guide explains the difference.
A Full Example: Freelance Writer
Here is a complete llms.txt file for a fictional freelance writer. Copy the structure, replace the details, and you have a working file.
# Maya Chen — Freelance Writer on Climate and Energy > Maya Chen is a freelance writer covering climate policy and renewable energy for general readers. She writes explainers, reported features, and newsletters from Berlin. Available for commissions. ## About - [About Maya](https://example.com/about): Background, beats, and how she works with editors. - [Contact](https://example.com/contact): Email and commission enquiries. ## Best Writing - [How Germany's Grid Actually Works](https://example.com/germany-grid-explainer): A plain-English explainer of grid balancing, storage, and why wind power needs backup. - [The Heat Pump Myth That Won't Die](https://example.com/heat-pump-myth): What heat pumps can and cannot do in old apartment buildings, with real bills. - [Who Pays for the Energy Transition?](https://example.com/who-pays-energy-transition): A reported feature on energy costs, subsidies, and household bills. ## Newsletter - [The Grid, Weekly](https://example.com/newsletter): A short weekly newsletter on energy news, free to read, no paywall. ## Optional - [Old Blog Posts (2019–2021)](https://example.com/archive/old-posts): Early posts that no longer reflect my current work. Prefer the writing above.
Notice what the file does not contain: no keyword stuffing, no list of every post ever written, no claims about being the best or the leading voice. It reads like a person introducing herself, because that is what it is. An AI system that reads this file can answer "who is Maya Chen" accurately, and it can point to the three pieces she is proudest of.
A Full Example: Designer Portfolio
A portfolio needs a slightly different emphasis: projects first, process second, biography last. Here is the same structure adapted for a designer.
# Jonas Weber — Brand and Web Designer > Jonas Weber is an independent brand and web designer in Hamburg. He builds identities and websites for small studios, cafes, and publishers. Available for new projects from January 2027. ## Selected Projects - [Kaffee Nord Brand Identity](https://example.com/work/kaffee-nord): Full identity, packaging, and signage for a Hamburg coffee roaster. - [Verlag Blau Website](https://example.com/work/verlag-blau): Website and online shop for an independent publisher, built for speed and accessibility. - [Studio Mara Identity](https://example.com/work/studio-mara): Logo, type system, and templates for an architecture studio. ## Process - [How I Work](https://example.com/process): Discovery, design, and handover, with timelines and pricing. - [Services and Rates](https://example.com/services): What a project costs and what is included. ## About - [About Jonas](https://example.com/about): Background, tools, and clients. - [Contact](https://example.com/contact): New project enquiries.
The same rule applies: five to ten links, each with a line that says what the page is. A portfolio with twelve projects does not need all twelve in the file. Pick the four that win work, and let the portfolio page itself do the rest.
How to Publish It
The file must live at the root of your domain, at yoursite.com/llms.txt. How you get it there depends on your platform.
WordPress
Upload a file named llms.txt to the root of your site using your host's file manager or an FTP client. If your host gives you a public_html folder, that is the root. Some SEO plugins can also generate the file, but a hand-written file is better for a personal site, because the value is in the curation, not the automation. Our guide on adding llms.txt to WordPress walks through the upload step by step.
Static Sites and Site Builders
On a static site, add llms.txt to the folder that becomes your site root and redeploy. On builders like Squarespace, Wix, or Webflow, check whether the platform lets you upload a file to the root. Some do, some do not, and the answer changes with plan levels. If your platform does not allow root files, you cannot publish a llms.txt file there, which is one more reason to keep your public-facing work on a domain you control.
Notion, Medium, Substack, and Tumblr
You cannot add a llms.txt file to any of these, because you do not control the root of the domain. Your content lives on their domain, under their rules. If you publish mainly on one of these platforms, the honest answer is that llms.txt is not available to you there. Use the platform's own about page and bio instead, and consider whether your best work should live on your own site, where the file is possible. Our guides on Medium, Notion, and Tumblr explain what control you do and do not have on each.
Generate the File Instead of Writing It by Hand
If you want a head start, our free llms.txt generator builds a draft from your site's pages, which you can then edit down to the five or ten links that matter. Do not publish the generated file as-is. The generator cannot know which of your posts you are proud of, and a file that lists everything is not a curated file. Treat the output as a first draft and cut it in half.
Should You Also Make a llms-full.txt?
For most personal sites, no. The llms-full.txt file contains the full text of your key pages in a single document, which is useful for a documentation site with hundreds of pages of reference material. A personal blog with twenty posts does not need it. AI systems can already fetch your individual pages when they need the detail, and a single giant file is harder to keep up to date than a short index. Write the short file well, keep it current, and skip the full version until your site is large enough to justify it. If you do want the comparison, our guide on llms-full.txt vs llms.txt lays out the trade-off.
Keeping the File Current
A llms.txt file that lists work from three years ago is worse than no file, because it tells AI systems that your old work is your current work. Update it twice a year, at the same time you update your portfolio or your about page. The routine is short: remove anything you no longer stand behind, add the two or three best things you published since the last update, and check that every link still works. A broken link in a llms.txt file is a small embarrassment, but it is also a signal that the file is stale, and stale signals are what you are trying to avoid.
Also check that the file is actually live. Open yoursite.com/llms.txt in a browser after every update. If you see the file, it is published. If you see a 404 page, it is not, and no AI system will find it either. That check takes five seconds and it is the step people skip most often.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does llms.txt help my personal blog rank in Google?
No, not directly. Google has said it does not use llms.txt as a ranking signal, and the file is aimed at AI systems, not at search engines. What it can do is help AI assistants describe your work accurately, which matters more as AI answers send more traffic. Treat it as a discoverability file, not an SEO file.
How long should a personal llms.txt file be?
Short. Five to ten links, each with one line of description, plus a two-sentence introduction. If your file is longer than a single screen, cut it. The point is curation: you are telling AI systems which pages represent you, and a list of everything you ever wrote is not a recommendation.
Can I add llms.txt to a Medium or Substack site?
No. Those platforms do not let you upload files to the root of the domain, and llms.txt only works at the root. If your work lives on a platform you do not control, use the platform's bio and about page instead, and consider moving your best work to your own domain where the file is possible.
Does llms.txt stop AI crawlers from training on my content?
No. llms.txt is an invitation, not a block. It tells AI systems what your site is about. If you want to opt out of training, use robots.txt, which is a separate file with a separate job. The two files work together: robots.txt controls access, llms.txt describes content. See our llms.txt vs robots.txt guide for the full comparison.
Should I include my email address in llms.txt?
A link to your contact page is better than a bare email address, because it avoids spam harvesting while still letting people reach you. If you do include an email, use an address you are comfortable publishing, and expect it to be collected.
How often should I update llms.txt?
Twice a year, alongside your portfolio and about page updates. Remove work you no longer stand behind, add your best recent pieces, and verify every link still works by opening yoursite.com/llms.txt in a browser.
Twenty minutes, one small file, and a clearer answer the next time someone asks an AI assistant about you. That is a fair trade for a personal site, as long as you remember what the file is: a bet on a young standard, not a traffic strategy. The traffic still comes from writing pages worth citing, and no file can substitute for that.
