Published llms.txt has a format error

Why it matters

A consistently structured guidance document is easier to inspect and process with tools that choose to support the proposal. This audit does not test any consumer.

What to do

1. Compare the original line, byte span and excerpt in the finding with the served file.
2. Add the missing H1 project name or correct the reported H2 file-list entry to contain a Markdown link. Do not add optional sections just to clear the finding.
3. Run another complete audit of the same site after publishing the corrected document.

When to leave it as it is: You do not need to publish llms.txt. Direct 404 or 410 is not a finding for this rule.

What we read

One bounded original response from the registered origin root /llms.txt, after the audit robots policy permits the request. Subpath variants and /llms-full.txt are outside this rule.

The fixed publisher proposal and its retained license are admitted together. The parser reads the original UTF-8 bytes; reports retain original line and byte positions.

A definite local format error may be shown even when other syntax is unsupported. In that case coverage is incomplete and the result cannot close an earlier finding.

Example & evidence

An optional guidance document with a file-list entry; not a live audit or an AI adoption claim.

# Bakery
## Recipes
- recipe without a link

The file-list item has no Markdown link. The finding points to this original line.

# Bakery
## Recipes
- [Bread recipe](/recipes/bread)

This corrected document is a complete clean control. A summary blockquote is optional.

Confirm & check again

Check for yourself: Inspect the served origin-root file and the retained original excerpts; check the H1 and any H2 file-list entries.

Check again: Full audit — A subsequent full audit of the same origin can prove the format problem is no longer present only with complete grammar and reference coverage. Direct 404/410 makes the optional document not applicable. Redirects, policy skips, stale sources, missing bytes, errors and unsupported clean syntax cannot prove a fix. No new Verify executor is required.

Limits & sources

The check uses the fixed original proposal, not an independently standardized protocol or a measured AI/search requirement. It makes no consumer-adoption or ranking claim.

Only one selected origin-root document is checked. The response is bounded to 64 KiB, is not followed through redirects, and is never reconstructed from a truncated body.

Raw HTML and other unsupported Markdown forms remain incomplete. A definite local violation can still be reported, but incomplete coverage cannot reconcile an earlier issue.

Confidence: High High confidence applies to the demonstrated local error in the original bytes. It does not measure the usefulness of the optional file.

Sources

• AnswerDotAI/llms-txt contributors, Original llms.txt proposal, fixed publisher commit — H1 project name, optional blockquote summary and optional H2 file-list sections containing Markdown links; subpaths are allowed by the proposal but excluded from this root-only check. Checked 4 October 2026.

Editorial review: 2 November 2026