How to Turn On llms.txt in Ghost (and Fix the Lighthouse Warning)

If you run your Ghost site through Lighthouse or PageSpeed Insights, you may see a new warning: llms.txt does not follow recommendations. On Ghost, the fix is a single switch, but it isn't labelled "llms.txt", so it's easy to miss. This guide shows where it is, what it does, and how much it matters.

What is llms.txt?

llms.txt is a proposed standard: a plain text file at the root of your site, written in Markdown, that gives AI tools a short guide to your content. It starts with your site's name as a heading, a one-line summary, and then lists of links to your most useful pages, each with a short description.

Think of it as a sitemap written for language models: shorter, readable, and focused on what's worth reading.

Why Lighthouse flags it

Recent versions of Lighthouse added an Agentic Browsing section, which checks how easy your site is for AI agents to use. One of its checks looks for /llms.txt and expects three things: a # heading, a file longer than a few lines, and links written in Markdown, like [About](/about/).

On a Ghost site with the feature switched off, /llms.txt redirects to your homepage. Lighthouse then reads your homepage's HTML, finds no Markdown heading or links, and reports that the file "does not follow recommendations".

How to turn on llms.txt in Ghost

Ghost generates the file for you. You only need to switch it on:

1. In Ghost Admin, open Settings and find the Meta data section.
2. Turn on Enable structured data for LLMs and AI search engines.
3. Save.
4. Open yoursite.com/llms.txt in your browser. You should see a list of your pages and posts instead of being sent to your homepage.

If you don't see the switch, your Ghost version is older than the feature. Ghost(Pro) sites are updated automatically. If you host Ghost yourself, update it.

What Ghost serves

With the switch on, Ghost adds a few addresses to your site:

• /llms.txt: an index of your public pages and posts, with links.
• /llms-full.txt: all your public content in one file.
• A Markdown version of each post and page, at its address with .md added.

Paid and members-only posts appear with their title and excerpt only. The full text stays behind your paywall. Private sites don't serve any of these files.

Does llms.txt help SEO?

Not much, for now. Google has said it doesn't use llms.txt, and the big AI companies don't officially read it either: their crawlers mostly read your pages directly. The Lighthouse check sits outside the Performance and SEO scores, and it isn't a ranking factor.

It's still worth turning on. It costs nothing, it clears the warning, and if AI tools start relying on the file, your site is ready. Just don't expect it to move your traffic on its own. Clear pages, good titles and meta descriptions, and a fast site still matter far more. (More on that in Core Web Vitals for Ghost.)

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Landing pages and custom templates: the empty .md problem

This one catches out a lot of designed sites. Ghost builds llms.txt, llms-full.txt and every .md file from the text in its editor. A landing page made with a custom template keeps its words in the theme: the headline, the features, the FAQ. The page in Ghost only selects the template, so its editor is empty.

Visitors see a full page. AI tools get the title and nothing else. To check, open yoursite.com/your-landing-page.md: if all you see is a heading, it's happening on your site.

The same goes for anything a template pulls in on its own, like a table of tags or a list of recommendations. The theme renders it for visitors, but Ghost never runs the theme when it writes the Markdown.

The manual fix

Put the words in the page's editor as well. If the template doesn't show the page's content (no {{content}} in it), visitors won't see them twice, and Ghost uses them for the .md file and llms-full.txt.

The catch is keeping two copies in step. Change the template and the editor copy goes out of date. For content that changes by itself, like a tag list with post counts, a small script using Ghost's Admin API can rewrite the page body on a schedule.

How Ectobuilder handles it

Ectobuilder does this for you every time you deploy. For each custom template, it copies the template's words into its page in Ghost: headings, paragraphs, lists, FAQ questions and answers, and links with their labels. The header, footer, post lists and forms are left out. If the page has no excerpt, it gets the first paragraph, which also gives Ghost's search a better result.

• It follows your design. Change the template, deploy, and the page text in Ghost is updated with it.
• Visitors don't see it twice. It's only done for templates that don't show the page's own content.
• Your own writing is safe. If you edit the page in Ghost's editor, Ectobuilder leaves it alone from then on, and an excerpt you wrote yourself is never replaced.
• It's on by default. You can turn it off under Settings → SEO → Include page text in llms.txt.

This isn't hidden text in the SEO sense. Google reads the rendered page, which doesn't change; the Markdown copy simply carries the same words visitors already see.

Things to know

• Ghost only lists what's in its editor. The files are built from your posts and pages as written in Ghost. Text that lives in your theme isn't included (see landing pages and custom templates above). Your home page isn't a Ghost page at all, so llms.txt starts with your site title and description from Settings → General: make that description count.
• Older self-hosted versions had a caching issue. Before Ghost 6.60, sites behind Cloudflare could sometimes serve the Markdown version of a post to human visitors. If you host Ghost yourself behind a CDN, update before switching this on.
• Check for old redirects. If you once added a redirect for /llms.txt under Settings → Labs → Redirects, remove it, or it will keep hiding Ghost's file.

FAQ

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Sources

• llmstxt.org: the llms.txt proposal
• Ghost: built-in support for llms.txt and Markdown output
• Search Engine Journal: Lighthouse fails your llms.txt without Markdown links
• Iris Themes: Ghost llms.txt and .md URLs, setup and gotchas

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