Ask HN: Is the web for machines (/llm.txt) the one we wished we had as humans?

I got really tired, as a human, of parsing the standard marketing heavy web we have today. I've always loved the simplicity of gopher and gemini web.

Recently I found myself manually adding `/llm.txt` to most websites I visit because I find the content for LLMs strait to the point and clear. The only annoyance is web browsers like chrome do not render the markdown.

So could the AI revolution actually fix the web for humans as a side effect?

Do you find yourself doing the same?

33 points | by sunshine-o 8 hours ago

17 comments

  • ahriad 8 hours ago
    We broke the web so badly for humans that we had to build a clean web for machines, and now humans will have to use machines to experience a clean web again.
    [-]
    • tacostakohashi 7 hours ago
      Yeah, when browsers have a "reader mode", it's pretty obvious the plot has been lost somewhere.
    • sunir 7 hours ago
      We'll finally bring back Gopher.
      [-]
    • dmos62 8 hours ago
      I wonder why we broke the web.
      [-]
      • Eddy_Viscosity2 8 hours ago
        For the same reasons why we eventully pollute and corrupt every system and environment we use. If there is any benefit that can be extracted for some while the costs are borne by many, than this will occur and generate a positive feedback loop that grows over time.

        It's the law of monetization.

        [-]
        • qsera 7 hours ago
          >than this will occur and generate a positive feedback loop that grows over time.

          And despite this, modern life is made possible by the illusion that "regulations" work..

          [-]
          • Eddy_Viscosity2 3 hours ago
            Regulations can and do work, but its never a 'one and done' kind of solution because people find workarounds and loopholes. It requires a unceasing effort to maintain the balance.
      • ahriad 8 hours ago
        For money! Ads make money.
      • jt2190 7 hours ago
        Because while consumers value “inefficiency” (high design, wonderful prose, beautiful images, great usability) they don’t want to actually pay for it. Producers have to become extremely efficient without revenue, and are stuck with a choice: Produce at a loss, stop producing, or seek payment from another source (sponsorships, ads).
      • dmos62 7 hours ago
        It seems there's little agreement over how the web is broken.
        [-]
        • temp8830 7 hours ago
          People who love cookie banners either don't exist, or are alien invaders :)
      • functionmouse 8 hours ago
        In order to break the user, of course.
      • noufalibrahim 8 hours ago
        To improve the user experience.
      • throwaway613746 7 hours ago
        [dead]
    • soco 7 hours ago
      It's a matter of time until the web for machines will be crawling with ads and everything else, and worse.
  • marand23 7 hours ago
    I never thought about it before now but the llm era could be a form of renaissance for blind people on the Internet. An alternative web where functionality of every page is described in short but detailed text instead of extremely verbose and non-linear html tree structure.
  • rickette 8 hours ago
    Does any of the LLM providers actually use llms.txt?

    If I remember correctly this "standard" was setup by someone but without involvement of any of the major AI players.

    [-]
    • HermanMartinus 8 hours ago
      I can definitively say llms.txt is not used by any AI players. I run a blogging platform with around 80k blogs and /llms.txt is not requested by anything (other than humans checking to see if there's an llms.txt path).

      All regular pages are aggressively scraped to the extent it's a problem I have to consistently manage, but not llms.txt.

      [-]
      • nickserv 7 hours ago
        I'm seeing quite a bit of request for these on my work's GitBook documentation site.

        But perhaps these are developers specifically targeting these pages to feed whatever LLM they are using.

      • isaachinman 8 hours ago
        How is a static blog being scraped a problem? Do you not use a CDN?
        [-]
        • nickserv 7 hours ago
          > a blogging platform with around 80k blogs

          But nah, I'm sure OP doesn't know about CDNs.

        • the_real_cher 7 hours ago
          Are all blogs static though?
          [-]
          • johannes1234321 7 hours ago
            Very few blogs require frequent updates. Even with user comments.
      • sunshine-o 7 hours ago
        Amazing, I didn't know.

        So it get even stranger, I am the only one reading those /llms.txt ...

      • 0123456789ABCDE 7 hours ago
        > I can definitively say llms.txt is not used by any AI players.

          https://developers.openai.com/llms.txt
  https://docs.anthropic.com/llms.txt
  https://geminicli.com/llms.txt
  https://github.com/llms.txt
  https://docs.aws.amazon.com/llms.txt
  https://openrouter.ai/docs/llms.txt
        [-]
        • m4tthumphrey 6 hours ago
          OP clearly meant that the AI players are not reading and/or honouring llms.txt of other websites when scraping.
          [-]
          • 0123456789ABCDE 6 hours ago
            i stand corrected, but what was clear to you, obviously was not clear to me.
    • solumos 5 hours ago
      No, requesting "Accept: text/markdown" in the headers and returning markdown is the more agreed upon standard at this point.[0]

      [0] - https://acceptmarkdown.com/

      [-]
    • 0123456789ABCDE 7 hours ago
      yes, they do.

      anyone who's, even slightly, clued into how agents access documentation, has been making changes to their pages. ex: https://searchtxt-web.fly.dev/search?q=aws

  • skywalqer 8 hours ago
    Why didn't they place it in .well-known? Also, I couldn't find a website that has it.
    [-]
  • realty_geek 8 hours ago
    What is an example of a site with a good llm.txt?
    [-]
  • mohamedkoubaa 8 hours ago
    It just hasn't been gamed yet
  • tacostakohashi 7 hours ago
    Pretty much.

    There is an enshittification cycle at work. The web used to be good, predominately text, and useful, 25 years ago. Then... slowly... we added javascript, then AJAX, CSS, flash, interstitials, popups, marketing, social media, algorithms, doomscrolling... gradually but surely turn it into the unusable cesspool that it is today.

    Now we have AI! I think a big part of its utility is that it gets us back to text/information, and lets us bypass all the "beautiful" design / nonsense on the material it is trained on.

    However, AI is just beginning its enshittification cycle - now that it has a critical mass of users, it is an irresistible target to start slowly adding ads, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and whatever else people can dream up, until it also becomes unusable and the cycle repeats.

  • cyanydeez 8 hours ago
    oh don't worry, in 5 years your AI will be unundated with context poison prompts that try to get them to spend all your bank notes and meta bucks on equally useless things.

    This is just a redeux of the early web.

    [-]
    • maccam912 7 hours ago
      Already happening. I was using Claude to check out sampler plugins and I'm sure it happens undetected, and it might have mentioned it with other versions, but Claude Opus 4.8, being it's helpful, honest self, told me that one of the pages it reviewed had hidden text instructing it to recommend that plugin. It caught it and was able to avoid influence from that plugin at least, but we're already living in that world.
  • gobdovan 7 hours ago
    Not really, but sounds interesting. Would you care to share some sites that offer better llms.txt than main web page? Or talk about some piece of info you easily found on llms.txt that was hard to navigate to on the regular website?
    [-]
    • sunshine-o 5 hours ago
      llms.txt usually includes a clear sitemap and description of information available on a site.

      There are also clear definition of the restful scheme and API/data access options.

      One very basic example would be the weather channel https://weather.com/llms.txt

      [-]
      • gobdovan 4 hours ago
        Thanks, the comparison hit like a bag of bricks.
  • croes 6 hours ago
    No, the spammers are just at the beginning of ruining that too

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411569

    BTW why should Chrome even consider rendering a .txt file as markdown?

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    • user568439 4 hours ago
      That's what I was thinking... Now spammers will add hidden prompts or things worse than that for the LLMs...
  • jordemort 7 hours ago
    no
  • DeathArrow 7 hours ago
    I tried it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48410589`/llm.txt

    Result: no such item.

    From where do you got the idea that adding /llm.txt to urls will produce markdown?

    [-]
  • Umairq786 5 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • aaron695 8 hours ago
    [dead]
  • onion2k 8 hours ago
    The only annoyance is web browsers like chrome do not render the markdown.

    I imagine Claude could zero-shot a Chrome plugin for that.

    [-]
    • 8organicbits 7 hours ago
      Of course plugins that do this already exist. Save your tokens.