well-known

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Well-known refers to designating a common URL on domains for data to be located typically automatically by some software (like a browser or a search engine), and is generally an antipattern to be avoided, because it breaks the portability of content across directories and systems; see follow your nose instead.

"Well-known" are prescribed URLs/paths, whereas there are also emergent common page URLs published by IndieWeb sites like about, contact, etc. For those, see:

There are a couple of common patterns or categories of "well-known" URLs:

  1. a root level file
  2. stuff inside a root level "/.well-known/" directory, standardized by https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc8615

Criticism

See also the .well-known: Criticism section.

Root Level

emergent pages

Main article: page#Examples

There are a small handful of emergent root level pages that some community members have published:

See those individual pages for specific IndieWeb Examples etc.

There is also a search engine that is indexing specifically a few of these pages:

See pages for more.

historical for browsers and bots

Historically there are several root level paths that are used by browser and search engines, and it's unlikely that weโ€™ll ever be rid of them:

something.txt

There has been a disturbing pattern of new proposals in form of something.txt over the years, and in short, they're pretty much all bad ideas. (if this list gets too big, create a separate page)

ai.txt

ai.txt

ads.txt

Reference: Wikipedia:Ads.txt

humans.txt

humans.txt

human.json

human.json is a variant of this concept, but in JSON format, with additional protocols to assert human authorship and vouch for the humanity of others.

  • 2026-03-13: some discussion in #indieweb-dev about an HTML version using rel values like XFN. rel=met is probably the strongest vouching for someone. It is unclear if anything less has much value beyond individualsโ€™ own statements, e.g. an AI policy.

llms.txt

llmstxt.org is a proposal for a side file called /llms.txt "to provide information to help LLMs use a website at inference time" but also has secondary recommendations, such as suggesting authors provide a markdown version of all pages on a site, seems to constitute the sidefile-antipattern, and despite having "txt" in the name, is supposed to be written in Markdown.

  • There may be utility in this, but it seems all over the place in its goals -- Joe Crawford

An experiment showed no AI traffic to llms.txt:

Update 2026-09-10 llmstxt.org now proposes a "v2" (version 2) which includes link rel relationships to Markdown equivalents for all pages. More details at llmstxt.org

indieweb.txt

indieweb.txt A file proposed to show off the IndieWeb tactics employed by sites that has seen little use since its inception.

trust.txt

API endpoints

Apparently these root files are a convention on some sites:

Per:

inside a root well-known directory

Main article: .well-known

See Also

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