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

news.ycombinator.com

31–40 of 63 posts

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

#31

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.

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.

> 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

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

#32

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.

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

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

#33

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.

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.

Amazing, I didn't know.

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

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

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is a static blog being scraped a problem? Do you not use a CDN?

Are all blogs static though?

Very few blogs require frequent updates. Even with user comments.

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

#35
post #7
post #2

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.

I wonder why we broke the web.

It seems there's little agreement over how the web is broken.

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

#38
post #2

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.

It's a matter of time until the web for machines will be crawling with ads and everything else, and worse.

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

#39

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?

here: https://llmstxt.org/ and obviously it doesn't automatically produce markdown, it's something the website needs to provide (e.g. https://pydantic.dev/llms.txt)

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

#40
post #7
post #2

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.

I wonder why we broke the web.

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).
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