How to Add llms.txt to WordPress

Technical

Last updated September 17, 2026

llms.txt is a proposed convention: a plain-text file at your site root that gives a language model a curated map of your content, in Markdown, without the navigation and boilerplate that surround it in HTML.

It takes about twenty minutes to add. Before you do, here is the honest assessment.

What the file looks like

An H1 with your site name, a blockquote summarising it, then H2 sections listing links with one-line descriptions. That is the whole format.

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There is also a convention of publishing llms-full.txt containing the full text of your key pages rather than links to them. Useful for a small documentation site, unwieldy past a few dozen pages.

Adding it to WordPress

The obvious approach — drop a file in the web root — works until a WordPress update, a migration or a deployment replaces that directory. Three options, worst to best.

Option 1: a static file in the root

Upload llms.txt next to wp-config.php. It works immediately. It is also outside WordPress, so nothing regenerates it when your content changes, and it will quietly go stale. If you take this route, put a reminder in whatever process you use for releases.

Option 2: a rewrite rule and a template

Register a rewrite so WordPress itself answers the URL. This survives file-level changes and can be generated from your actual content.

add_action('init', function () {
    add_rewrite_rule('^llms\.txt$', 'index.php?llms_txt=1', 'top');
});

add_filter('query_vars', function ($vars) {
    $vars[] = 'llms_txt';
    return $vars;
});

add_action('template_redirect', function () {
    if (! get_query_var('llms_txt')) {
        return;
    }

    header('Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8');

    echo '# ' . get_bloginfo('name') . "\n\n";
    echo '> ' . get_bloginfo('description') . "\n\n";
    echo "## Documentation\n\n";

    foreach (get_pages(['sort_column' => 'menu_order']) as $page) {
        printf("- [%s](%s)\n", get_the_title($page), get_permalink($page));
    }

    exit;
});

Flush permalinks once after adding it, or the rule will not be live. Settings, then Permalinks, then Save.

Option 3: generate it at build or deploy time

If your site is built or deployed by a script, generate the file from the pages that actually shipped. This is what we do for the marketing site: the deploy walks the pages it just built and writes both llms.txt and llms-full.txt from them. A page cannot be listed unless it shipped, and cannot ship without being listed.

That property is the real argument for this option. Every hand-maintained index of a website eventually lies.

Checking it works

curl -sI https://example.com/llms.txt | head -3

You want 200 and Content-Type: text/plain. A 404 after using the rewrite approach almost always means permalinks were not flushed. HTML instead of plain text means your theme caught the request before your handler did.

Where to go next

GPTBot vs ClaudeBot vs PerplexityBot is the file that actually changes behaviour. Schema markup for AI search is the one search engines definitely read.

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