# llms.txt vs robots.txt vs sitemap.xml

> These three files look similar but do completely different jobs. Here's exactly what each one controls and why llms.txt is not an access-control file.

All three live at your site root and all three are plain text — but they solve different problems. Mixing them up is the most common llms.txt mistake.

## The one-line summary

  - **robots.txt** — controls *crawler access*: what bots may or may not fetch.

  - **sitemap.xml** — lists *every indexable page* for search engines.

  - **llms.txt** — curates a *shortlist of high-signal pages* for large language models at inference time.

## robots.txt is about permission

robots.txt tells crawlers which paths they're allowed to request. It is an access-control convention. It does not curate or rank content, and it isn't written for language models specifically.

## sitemap.xml is about coverage

A sitemap aims to be exhaustive: it maps all the URLs you want indexed so search engines don't miss anything. It's machine-oriented XML, not a human-readable summary.

## llms.txt is about curation

llms.txt is the opposite of exhaustive. It's a hand-picked, Markdown list of the few pages that best help a model understand and use your site — with a short description on each. It exists for *inference* (helping when a user asks an AI for help), not for training datasets and not for access control.

## They complement each other

You don't choose between them — a strong setup has all three. robots.txt governs access, sitemap.xml ensures coverage, and llms.txt curates signal for AI. Once you've written yours, [run it through the validator](/) and read [how to create an llms.txt file](/guide/how-to-create-llms-txt) for the format details.