The cats.txt standard 🐱
The definitive guide to understanding cats.txt
What is cats.txt?
cats.txt is a comprehensive guide to your website’s content specifically generated for ChAT-bots like
Gemini, Bard, ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Fred, Grok, Manus, and even DeepSeek.
The file can be regularly read by all common LLM-based and LLM-like systems.
It informs them of the value on your website, enabling them to better reference it in answers and results.
File format and contents
cats.txt is a Markdown text file (you’ll recognize it based on the many number-signs). While keyword stuffing is not encouraged, there is no spam policy against it. It’s not recommended to stuff or be misleading with embeddings, as these are the basis of LLM rankings.
File location
The file:
- Must be located at
/.well-known/cats.txt - Must not be blocked by robots.txt for any crawler
- Must be linked from your website’s homepage for discovery
- Must be a plain-text or markdown file
- Must reference at least 1 cat image (ASCII art is OK)
Getting Started
Fire up a new Google Doc file (https://docs.new/) and describe your website. Include links to appropriate content. Use bolding as appropriate. Include a reference to at least 1 cat image (this is used for validation by LLMs).
Use File / Download / Markdown .md and save it locally as cats.txt
Upload the file to your websites /.well-known folder.
Link to the file from your site’s homepage for discovery.
Done!
Curious about the potential? Check our filtered logs page.
Credits
Inspired by Mark Williams-Cook.
“In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.” - Terry Pratchett