How to Write an llms.txt File: A Practical Guide

This is the mechanical guide. If you want the background on what llms.txt is and whether it is worth publishing, read the explainer first.

1. Decide what belongs in it

Pick the pages you would hand a new hire on day one. In practice, that is usually:

• One page that explains what the product or organisation is.
• Getting-started or core documentation.
• Reference material an assistant would need to answer accurately (API reference, pricing, limits).
• Two or three canonical guides per major topic.
• Policy pages if they affect answers — licensing, terms, security.

Aim for 10 to 40 links. If you are past 60, you are writing a sitemap.

2. Write the header

# Reflyma

> Reflyma measures how AI answer engines describe, cite and recommend your brand, and ships free tools for AI-search readiness.

Reflyma tracks brand visibility across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and other
answer engines using neutral research prompts and evidence-linked reporting.

Exactly one H1. One blockquote summary. Optional prose after it — keep it to a few lines, and make it factual rather than promotional.

3. Group the links into sections

## Product

- [AI Search Visibility](https://reflyma.com/ai-search-visibility): How brand visibility tracking works, and the methodology behind the score.
- [Pricing](https://reflyma.com/pricing): Plans, limits and what each tier includes.

## Free tools

- [LLMs.txt Generator](https://reflyma.com/tools/llms-txt-generator): Generates a spec-compliant llms.txt from a crawl of your site.
- [AI Bot Access Checker](https://reflyma.com/tools/ai-bot-access-checker): Checks whether AI crawlers are allowed by your robots.txt.

## Optional

- [Terms](https://reflyma.com/terms): Terms of service.

Rules that matter: absolute URLs, one link per list item, a colon-separated note describing what the page contains, and a trailing ## Optional section for anything droppable.

4. Write good link notes

The note is the part a model reads to decide whether to fetch the page. Compare:

• Bad: - [Docs](https://example.com/docs): Documentation.
• Good: - [Docs](https://example.com/docs): REST API reference including auth, rate limits and webhook payloads.

5. Serve it correctly

• Path: /llms.txt at the domain root, not in a subdirectory.
• Status: 200, no redirect chain.
• Content type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 or text/markdown.
• Not blocked by robots.txt, and not behind auth or a bot challenge.

On most static hosts, dropping the file in public/ is enough. Behind a CDN, confirm the edge is not rewriting the content type.

6. Validate it

Check the structural rules: single H1, blockquote directly after it, every list item a well-formed Markdown link, all URLs absolute and resolving, no duplicate URLs, and ## Optional last if present. Reflyma's LLMs.txt validator checks these and fetches each URL to flag dead links; the generator will produce a first draft from a crawl if you would rather start from something.

7. Keep it alive

Add it to the same review cycle as your sitemap and navigation. A file pointing at three URLs that 404 is a worse signal than no file at all.