Agent Ready HTML

How to write an llms.txt that gets followed

In short

Write an H1, a one-line blockquote summary and a few H2 sections of links to your best pages. Keep it small, keep the links on your own site, and link the file from your home page, because agents reached it through a link in 86 percent of attributed fetches.

The proposal asks for little: an H1 is the only required part. What decides whether the file is used is whether anything points at it and whether it stays small enough to be read.

What the evidence says

  • The H1 is the only required section; a blockquote summary, detail text and H2 link lists are optional. [primary source] source, read 4 November 2026.
  • Agents reached llms.txt through links in 356 of 416 attributed fetches, 86 percent. [primary source] source, read 4 November 2026.
  • Of 325 runs that reached llms.txt with a scorable result, 117 (36 percent) later fetched a page it listed. [primary source] source, read 4 November 2026.
  • Cloudflare splits its docs llms.txt per top-level directory, because one file for 5,000+ pages exceeds model context windows. [primary source] source, read 4 November 2026.
  • Cloudflare reports an agent using its refined llms.txt used 31 percent fewer tokens and reached the right answer 66 percent faster than on comparable docs sites. [vendor claim] source, read 4 November 2026.
  • Mintlify caps generated llms.txt indexes at 100,000 characters and moves overflow to split indexes under /_llms/. [primary source] source, read 4 November 2026.

Steps

  1. Start with the H1: the name of the site or project.
  2. Add a blockquote summary of one or two sentences that says what the site is for.
  3. Add H2 sections, each a list of links in the form [name](url): notes. Put secondary links under an H2 named Optional.
  4. Keep the links on your own site and the file under 100 KB. If the site has thousands of pages, split the index by section the way Cloudflare and Mintlify do.
  5. Link the file from the home page: a visible footer anchor and a link element with rel="describedby" both count. An HTTP Link header works too.
  6. Grade the result with the llms.txt Index checks and run the viewer on your home page to confirm the link is found.

A small valid file

# Example Co

> Example Co sells invoicing software. Pricing and the API reference are the two pages most questions need.

## Docs

- [Pricing](https://example.com/pricing): plans and limits
- [API reference](https://example.com/docs/api): endpoints and errors

## Optional

- [Changelog](https://example.com/changelog)

Link it from the home page

<link rel="describedby" type="text/markdown" href="/llms.txt">
<a href="/llms.txt">llms.txt</a>

Check the result

Open /llms-txt-index/ and find an entry with a similar shape, or run the viewer on your home page: the llms.txt flag reads present and linked when both halves are done. Open the viewer to run it on your own URL.

Related: all guides, initial HTML, llms.txt.

Sources

  1. llms.txt proposal (llmstxt.org) https://llmstxt.org/, read 4 November 2026
  2. Vercel and Ora: Make your site readable by AI agents https://vercel.com/kb/guide/make-your-site-readable-by-ai-agents, read 4 November 2026
  3. Cloudflare: agent readiness score and Radar numbers https://blog.cloudflare.com/agent-readiness/, read 4 November 2026
  4. Mintlify docs: llms.txt https://www.mintlify.com/docs/ai/llmstxt, read 4 November 2026

Last reviewed 4 November 2026