Does VitePress support llms.txt natively?

Not as of 2026. VitePress ships no built-in llms.txt generation and llmstxt.org's integrations list has no VitePress entry yet. The gap is filled two ways: the public directory copies a static docs/public/llms.txt to your site root with zero configuration, and the community vitepress-plugin-llms plugin auto-generates the file at every build. The plugin is not a toy — Vue.js, Vite, Vitest and VitePress's own documentation all use it in production.

vitepress-plugin-llms or vitepress-plugin-llmstxt — which should I use?

Start with vitepress-plugin-llms: it is zero-config, generates llms.txt with section links, llms-full.txt and a Markdown version of every page, and powers the biggest VitePress docs sites. Choose vitepress-plugin-llmstxt when you need finer control: it has zero dependencies and adds ignore globs to exclude routes, a transform callback to rewrite generated content, dynamic route and i18n support, plus experimental compatibility with VitePress 2.0 alpha.

Do real VitePress sites actually publish llms.txt?

Yes. Verified with curl on 2026-09-06: vuejs.org, vite.dev, vitest.dev and vitepress.dev all return HTTP 200 for /llms.txt. The vitepress.dev file is a good reference implementation — a single H1, a short blockquote summary, and a Table of Contents whose links point to per-page Markdown versions such as /guide/getting-started.md, which is the markdown page form defined by the llms.txt v2 spec.

VitePress tutorial · Static or plugin · 7 minutes

How to Add llms.txt to VitePress

VitePress is the Vue-powered static site generator behind the documentation of Vite, Vue.js, Vitest and many other flagship open-source projects. It has no native llms.txt feature — yet its own documentation ships one, and so do the docs of every major project in its ecosystem. Two routes get you there: a static file in public/, or build-time generation with vitepress-plugin-llms. Both are covered here, with real config and a curl check.

VitePress Docs Sites That Already Publish llms.txt

Documentation is where llms.txt earns its keep — the llmstxt.org spec notes that coding agents follow the file to reach API references and tutorials — and the VitePress ecosystem was among the first to dogfood it. These are not hypothetical examples. Verified with curl on 2026-09-06:

Site	Built with VitePress for	/llms.txt on 2026-09-06
vuejs.org	Vue.js	HTTP 200
vite.dev	Vite	HTTP 200
vitest.dev	Vitest	HTTP 200
vitepress.dev	VitePress itself	HTTP 200

The shape of these files is worth studying. The one on vitepress.dev starts with a single H1, a one-line blockquote summary, and a Table of Contents:

# VitePress

> Vite & Vue Powered Static Site Generator

Markdown to beautiful docs in minutes

## Table of Contents

- [Getting Started](/guide/getting-started.md): Get up and running with VitePress.
  Learn how to install, scaffold, and start developing your documentation site.
- [Asset Handling](/guide/asset-handling.md): Learn how to reference and handle
  static assets such as images, media, and fonts in VitePress.

Notice the links: every page is listed as a .md URL. That is the markdown page form the llms.txt v2 spec defines — a VitePress page rendered as clean Markdown is exactly the format an LLM wants to ingest, and it is what vitepress-plugin-llms outputs.

Method 1: Drop a Static File in the public Directory

VitePress gives you a shortcut that most SSGs do: everything in the public directory — docs/public by default, directly under your source directory — is copied verbatim to the root of the build output. The official docs name robots.txt and favicons as the typical use case; llms.txt works the same way. Create docs/public/llms.txt:

# Acme Docs

> Acme Docs is the official documentation for the Acme platform.
> It covers installation, configuration and the REST API.

## Getting Started

- [Quickstart](https://docs.example.com/getting-started/): first project in five minutes
- [Authentication](https://docs.example.com/authentication/): API keys and scopes

## API Reference

- [REST API](https://docs.example.com/api/): every endpoint, parameter and error

The next npm run docs:build serves it at https://docs.example.com/llms.txt. Two notes: if you set a custom srcDir, the public directory follows it, and if the site deploys under a subpath via the base option, the file still lands at the output root while your listed URLs stay absolute. This route is fine while your docs are small and stable — the cost is that every new page means a hand edit, and a file that drifts from your content is a file agents follow into stale territory.

Method 2: Auto-Generate with vitepress-plugin-llms

The ecosystem workhorse is okineadev/vitepress-plugin-llms — roughly 400 stars as of September 2026, and adopted across the VoidZero ecosystem with the blessing of Vue.js. The flagship sites above use it: the file served on vitepress.dev is its output. Install and register it:

# terminal
npm install vitepress-plugin-llms --save-dev

// .vitepress/config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vitepress'
import llmstxt from 'vitepress-plugin-llms'

export default defineConfig({
  vite: {
    plugins: [llmstxt()],
  },
})

Zero configuration required. Every build now writes three things into .vitepress/dist: llms.txt (the curated index with section links), llms-full.txt (all documentation merged into one file — see how the two relate in the llms.txt vs llms-full.txt guide), and a clean Markdown version of every page, which llms.txt links to. The plugin authors call out one practice that visibly improves the output: add a description to each page's frontmatter and it becomes the link description in llms.txt — which is exactly what an agent reads when deciding which link to fetch.

Two finer points from the project's documentation. First, you can mark sections of a Markdown source file as llm-only or llm-exclude to control what reaches the LLM versions — useful for instructions aimed at agents, or human-only notes. Second, for repositories with documentation in multiple languages the author recommends enabling the plugin for the English docs only; that is all an LLM needs.

Alternative: vitepress-plugin-llmstxt

If you need finer control than zero-config gives you, vitepress-plugin-llmstxt (npm 0.5.x, zero dependencies) also generates llms.txt, llms-full.txt and per-page Markdown files, then adds: glob-based ignore patterns to exclude routes, a transform callback that rewrites generated content, dynamic-route and i18n support, and experimental compatibility with VitePress 2.0 alpha. A configured example:

// .vitepress/config.ts
import { defineConfig } from 'vitepress'
import llmstxt from 'vitepress-plugin-llmstxt'

export default defineConfig({
  vite: {
    plugins: [
      llmstxt({
        hostname: 'https://docs.example.com',
        ignore: ['**/api/**/*'],
      }),
    ],
  },
})

The hostname option pins the absolute URLs in your file (useful when VitePress infers the wrong origin), and ignore keeps internal or generated pages out of the index.

Static File or Plugin?

Approach	Setup	Per-page .md	llms-full.txt	Stays current
Static `docs/public/llms.txt`	1 minute	No	No	Manual edits only
`vitepress-plugin-llms`	~5 minutes	Yes	Yes	Every build
`vitepress-plugin-llmstxt`	~5 minutes	Yes	Yes	Every build

A hand-written file is fine while your sitemap is small and your structure rarely moves. The moment docs change weekly — new guides, migrated pages, added API endpoints — generation wins, because the llms.txt an agent reads is only as trustworthy as its last update, and a plugin cannot forget to update itself.

The VitePress Checklist

Confirm the public directory path — it is docs/public by default but moves with srcDir; a static file in the wrong folder quietly never gets published.
Register the plugin under vite.plugins, not at the top level of the VitePress config — these are Vite plugins and VitePress only loads them there.
Write a description in every page's frontmatter — it becomes the link description agents use to choose pages. "What problem this page solves" beats a module name.
Keep it English-only for LLM purposes — for multi-language docs, generate the file from the English tree only, per the plugin's own guidance.
Verify the deployed file, not just the build — redirect rules, domain moves and docs restructures break llms.txt in production after the build goes green. Confirm it serves as plain text:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} %{content_type}\n" https://docs.example.com/llms.txt
# Expect: 200 text/plain

Then paste the URL into the free llms.txt checker to validate the H1, blockquote summary, absolute URLs and section structure against the spec. To draft the initial file in seconds, feed your docs sitemap into the free llms.txt generator, then let the plugin keep it current from there. VitePress made llms.txt a zero-maintenance default for the biggest projects in the Vue ecosystem — your docs can be next.