AnswerDotAI/llms-txt

Suggestion: /.well-known/llms.txt instead

Opened this issue · 5 comments

These days there's a increasingly adopted alternative to the /robots.txt and /sitemap.xml and /favicon.ico standards - the /.well-known prefix: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_URI

These have been registered with IANA since ~2010: https://www.iana.org/assignments/well-known-uris/well-known-uris.xhtml

The RFC has the argument for why this is a good idea, which honestly I haven't read in a few years so I'm a bit rusty on: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc5785

Oh, maybe this is it (quoting the RFC):

When this happens, it is common to designate a "well-known location" for such data, so that it can be easily located. However, this approach has the drawback of risking collisions, both with other such designated "well-known locations" and with pre-existing resources.

To address this, this memo defines a path prefix in HTTP(S) URIs for these "well-known locations", "/.well-known/". Future specifications that need to define a resource for such site-wide metadata can register their use to avoid collisions and minimise impingement upon sites' URI space.

3052 commented

100%. its kind of sad that a group of this size didn't bother doing any research on prior art before throwing this up.

A more complete argument can be found in RFC 8820. The original name of that document was a variation on "get off my lawn", which is a good summary of the general problem here.

Came here to also ask that this be proposed as well known, per: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc8615

it's a great idea to use .well-known but it is still not so well known :(

100% Here's examples of all the other .well-known's in use https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well-known_URI#List_of_well-known_URIs