llms.txt vs AGENTS.md
The map lists them as complementary: sites and agents commonly implement both.
| llms.txt | AGENTS.md | |
|---|---|---|
| Lifecycle step | 4 Read: Give me the content | 4 Read: Give me the content |
| Answers | Where can an agent find a concise, curated map of a site's content, written for language models rather than browsers? | What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository? |
| Governed by | Jeremy Howard / Answer.AI; maintained as an open proposal in the AnswerDotAI/llms-txt GitHub repository with a public Discord for implementation discussion | Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a Linux Foundation project |
| Status (issuer's words) | "This is v2 of the proposal" — explicitly a community proposal open for input, not a standards-track document | "An open format... regardless of which coding agent you use"; explicitly not proprietary to any one tool |
| Phase | draft | living |
| Version | v2 (2026-08) | current site guidance (living document) (2026-09) |
| Form / transport | well-known file | well-known file |
| Found at | /llms.txt (or /<path>/llms.txt, e.g. /docs/llms.txt) | AGENTS.md |
| Adoption | claimed — Rankability (Tranco top-1000, June 2026: 8.7%) and SE Ranking (~300,000 domains analyzed: 10.13%) — independent third-party publisher-side counts, not our own probe | claimed — agents.md (site claims over 60,000 AGENTS.md files across open-source GitHub repositories, via a path:AGENTS.md NOT is:fork NOT is:archived code search) |
| Evidence | 4 verified, 4 reported | 2 reported, 1 verified |
| Primary use case | Serve readable content to agents | Serve readable content to agents |
| Last verified | 2026-10-19 (current) | 2026-10-19 (current) |
| Specification | https://llmstxt.org | https://agents.md |
When to use which
- Choose llms.txt when your question is “Where can an agent find a concise, curated map of a site's content, written for language models rather than browsers?” and you accept its maturity: phase draft, adoption claimed (Rankability (Tranco top-1000, June 2026: 8.7%) and SE Ranking (~300,000 domains analyzed: 10.13%) — independent third-party publisher-side counts, not our own probe).
- Choose AGENTS.md when your question is “What build, test, and convention instructions should a coding agent follow in this repository?” and you accept its maturity: phase living, adoption claimed (agents.md (site claims over 60,000 AGENTS.md files across open-source GitHub repositories, via a path:AGENTS.md NOT is:fork NOT is:archived code search)).