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Llms.txt

llmstxt.org

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Re: Llms.txt

#131

Post by crimsoneer »

Tepix wrote: post #91
JimDabell wrote: post #10

This is not how these kinds of things should be designed for the web. Instead of putting resources in the root of the web, this is what /.well-known/ was designed for. See RFC 5785: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5785 Instead of munging URLs to get alternate formats, this is what content negotiation or rel=alternate were designed for. I’m not sure making it easier to consume content is something that is nee…

I think the whole idea of extra instructions required for LLMs is unnecessary. A decent LLM should be able to handle browsing the site, if needed it can use the sitemap. It can hopefully also figure out what the various sections are about.

But why would we waste that many tokens on objects that LLms dont care about?

Humans appreciate beauty. LLMs do not. Why are we wasting effort?

Re: Llms.txt

#132

Post by [deleted] »

phito wrote: post #121
idf00 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had python code and you didn't want it to have syntax highlighting or be run/imported or any of the other normal things that you do with python files, it might make sense to have python code in a .txt. file. Same idea here IMO. .md would signal the wrong intent, as you don't want to render it to markdown formatting or read as a markdown file normally is. You want it to be read as plain unrendered text. Sam

Why even have an extension? Unrelated, but the comment two steps above has the same username pattern as yours (3 letters+00)

[deleted]

Re: Llms.txt

#133

Post by [deleted] »

phito wrote: post #121
idf00 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had python code and you didn't want it to have syntax highlighting or be run/imported or any of the other normal things that you do with python files, it might make sense to have python code in a .txt. file. Same idea here IMO. .md would signal the wrong intent, as you don't want to render it to markdown formatting or read as a markdown file normally is. You want it to be read as plain unrendered text. Sam

Why even have an extension? Unrelated, but the comment two steps above has the same username pattern as yours (3 letters+00)

[deleted]

Re: Llms.txt

#134

Post by crowcroft »

jph00 wrote: post #55

Hi Jeremy here. Nice to see this on HN. To explain the reasoning for this proposal, by way of an example: I recently released FastHTML, a small library for creating hypermedia applications, and by far the most common concern I've received from potential users is that language models aren't able to help use it, since it was created after the knowledge cutoff of current models. IDEs like Cursor let you add docs to the…

I understand the problem, but I'm not convinced this solution would do much to solve the problem?

1. LLMs give this doc special preference and SEO type optimisation will run rampant by brands. 2. LLMs crawl this as just another page, and then you need to ask yourself why isn't this context already on the website?

Re: Llms.txt

#135

Post by PaulHoule »

blenderob wrote: post #126

Anyone else worried how backward this sounds? I mean this is like totally giving up on the dismal state of website UXes these days and gladly accepting that website navigation and experience should remain utterly confusing for humans but machines (yes, machines) should get preferential treatment! Good UX is now for machines, not for humans! Shouldn't something like this be first and foremost for humans ... which also…

It seems not thought through at all, just an attempt to get on the LLM bandwagon, like Facebook's giving up on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas VR (would be so much fun and the gfx would probably work great) for a "pivot to AI" which just seems to be mindless flocking with an inevitable pivot to something else in another year and a half when they realize they spend $20B building a model and got $20M worth of revenue.

Re: Llms.txt

#136

Post by teddyh »

russellbeattie wrote: post #22
Joker_vD wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only this RFC was well-known among the people who actually put stuff out on the Web.

If only that RFC didn't make it a hidden directory. I can think of a dozen reasons why hiding that folder is a horrible idea, and not a single one for why it would be a good thing to do.

A URL path is not a directory path; there is no reason to assume that a path must be served by a directory by the same name. I mean, do you assume that there somewhere exists an actual machine with its Unix hostname set to “news.ycombinator.com”?

Re: Llms.txt

#138

Post by randomdata »

jph00 wrote: post #85
romantomjak wrote: post #78

I find it confusing that author proposes llms.txt, but the content is actually markdown? I get that they tried to follow the convention, but then why not make it a simple text file like the robots.txt is?

Markdown is plain text. llms.txt is meant to be displayed in plain text format, not rendered to html.

Why does the proposal propose using .md for all other LLM-directed resources, then? Aren't they equally meant to be displayed in plain text format?

Re: Llms.txt

#139

Post by blah123456 »

phito wrote: post #121
idf00 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had python code and you didn't want it to have syntax highlighting or be run/imported or any of the other normal things that you do with python files, it might make sense to have python code in a .txt. file. Same idea here IMO. .md would signal the wrong intent, as you don't want to render it to markdown formatting or read as a markdown file normally is. You want it to be read as plain unrendered text. Sam

Why even have an extension? Unrelated, but the comment two steps above has the same username pattern as yours (3 letters+00)

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Re: Llms.txt

#140

Post by [deleted] »

sodality2 wrote: post #129
idf00 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

llms.txt doesn't seem to make it any easier or harder to do that.

...it gives you a version only the LLM will see, as opposed to having to identify the visitor as a scraper or human and determining if they get the good or bad version.

[deleted]
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