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

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51–60 of 63 posts

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

#51

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.

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/

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

#53

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?

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

Thanks, the comparison hit like a bag of bricks.

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

#54
post #51

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.

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/

This is interesting. I should start incorporating this -- it couldn't hurt to do both.

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

#55
post #45

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?

That's what I was thinking... Now spammers will add hidden prompts or things worse than that for the LLMs...

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

#56
post #51

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.

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/

Now, it would be super cool to get markdown and zero javascript bundles…

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

#57
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>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..

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.

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

#58
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Now, it would be super cool to get markdown and zero javascript bundles…

If you want to see what that looks like, I one-shot a browser with Claude that does it[0]. Docs pages are early adopters to this[1][2], so that AI agents can better handle tasks.

[0] - https://github.com/solumos/md-browse

[1] - https://docs.stripe.com

[2] - https://vercel.com/docs

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

#59

What is an example of a site with a good llm.txt?

Anthropic's developer documentation: https://platform.claude.com/llms.txt. There's also https://platform.claude.com/llms-full.txt which is (WARNING) much bigger. Not sure where this second one fits into the standard.

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

#60
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

Now, it would be super cool to get markdown and zero javascript bundles…

I just found out Cloudflare supports real-time html to md conversion [0]

- [0] https://blog.cloudflare.com/markdown-for-agents/#convert-htm...

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