What Is an AI Discovery File?

An AI Discovery File is a generated machine-facing site guide that helps AI systems and agents understand important public content identified from site-level crawl, sitemap, navigation, canonical URL, and analyzed-page evidence.

MarketingStride's AI Discovery File v1 is designed to generate an installable `/llms.txt` file for eligible site-level packages.

It is generated from eligible site-level run evidence, such as a completed Website Audit or Website Rescan, rather than from a separate whole-site crawler that independently creates a complete map of every page.

Plain-Language Explanation

An AI Discovery File gives machines a concise guide to the public pages that matter most on your website.

It is not a replacement for your website, your sitemap, or structured data. It is an additional implementation artifact that helps organize public site information in a clear, machine-readable way.

Relationship to `/llms.txt`

`/llms.txt` is the file location where the AI Discovery File is intended to be installed.

When available, MarketingStride generates the file contents so you or your team can preview, copy, download, and install them at that location on your website.

What MarketingStride Generates

MarketingStride uses available site-level evidence, such as crawl, sitemap, navigation, canonical URL, page role, discovered URL, and analyzed-page evidence, to produce a deterministic site guide.

The file is limited to public, useful website URLs. It excludes obvious non-public or low-value paths when they are detected, such as login, account, admin, cart, checkout, search, tag archive, author archive, privacy, terms, cookie policy, inaccessible, blocked, duplicate, private, or gated URLs.

Because it is based on eligible site-level run evidence, the file should be treated as an implementation artifact connected to Website Audit and Website Rescan results, not as a guarantee that MarketingStride has independently evaluated every public URL on the site.

Where To Install It

The generated file should be installed at:

`https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt`

Your website or developer team may need to place the file depending on how your site is hosted.

What It Does

An AI Discovery File can:

• provide a machine-facing guide to important public website content;
• organize key public pages in a compact implementation artifact;
• complement generated Q&A, JSON-LD, and implementation guidance;
• support validation that the file is present, reachable, and free of obvious inappropriate URLs.

What It Does Not Guarantee

An AI Discovery File does not guarantee:

• AI visibility;
• search rankings;
• citations;
• inclusion in AI-generated answers;
• competitive outcomes;
• that every AI system will use or respect the file.

MarketingStride treats the AI Discovery File as an implementation artifact, not as a ranking or visibility guarantee.

How It Relates to JSON-LD and Q&A

Generated Q&A and JSON-LD are page-level implementation artifacts derived from answer-ready key points and existing page content.

The AI Discovery File is different because it is site-level. It helps describe the important public content across a website rather than generating content or structured data for an individual key point.

What To Do If Validation Fails

If validation fails, review the failure message first.

Common causes include:

• no eligible public URLs were found;
• unexpected private or low-value URLs were included;
• the generated file is empty;
• the installed `/llms.txt` file is not reachable;
• the file is stale after a site-level rescan;
• the file was not installed at the expected location.

If you are unsure what to do next, contact MarketingStride Support and include the validation message, your website domain, and whether the file has already been installed.