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Rule catalogue

llmstxt.unreachable

/llms.txt must answer with the file or with 404, not with a server error

warningsite-wideguideline

Why it matters

Having no llms.txt is allowed — the file is a proposal, and a 404 says the site has none. A server error says something is there and failed, which leaves an agent with nothing it can use. Lighthouse fails its llms.txt audit on exactly this case. Stays silent when every unknown .txt errors the same way: that is http.not-found's finding, reported once.

What the finding looks like

The message goflag prints, with example values substituted.

warn llmstxt.unreachable /llms.txt answered 503. Having no llms.txt is fine — a 404 says so — but a server error says something is here and failed, and the agent that asked for it gets nothing it can use. Lighthouse fails its llms.txt audit on exactly this.

How to fix it

The catalogue carries no snippet for a site rule: a cross-page rule builds its remedy from what the crawl found, so goflag attaches the fix to the finding itself rather than to the rule. Run it and read the finding.

Says who?

This rule is guideline, and it cites the documents below. Nothing here is goflag’s opinion of what a good page looks like — if you disagree with a finding, this is what you are disagreeing with.