Answer.AI’s Jeremy Howard, who created the llms.txt format, published a version 2 spec update on August 10, the first change since the proposal launched. The revision defines two link relations: one pointing from an HTML page to its Markdown equivalent, another pointing back to the llms.txt entry that describes it.
Sites can expose either relation inside an HTML link tag in the page head, or attach it via an HTTP header, so it also works on non-HTML files and can be set at the server or CDN level. V2 still allows two Markdown URL patterns: tacking .md onto the end of the full filename, or swapping the extension outright. Howard says the change draws on two years of watching adoption grow.
Chrome’s Lighthouse tool already checks for an llms.txt file under its Agentic Browsing category, though that check does not test the new link relations. Google’s Search team maintains that llms.txt is not on its agenda and that the file affects neither visibility nor rankings.
No major AI company has committed to honoring llms.txt, so this update reads as a signal of where the spec’s authors want it to go, not a change in how any live system behaves today.
Search Engine Journal’s Matt G. Southern reported the update on August 17, 2026.
