How to publish a valid llms.txt on Squarespace

On Squarespace, llms.txt is not a file. There is nowhere to put one. The platform stores every upload on a CDN it controls, and its own documentation says you cannot move or redirect those URLs. What Squarespace gives you instead is a text box in a settings panel, and whether that box exists on your site depends entirely on which version you are running.

That single fact decides the whole job. On version 7.1 it takes about three minutes. On version 7.0 the answer is that you cannot do it, and Squarespace's own help articles are the ones that close the door.

Quick summary

Why Squarespace has no file for you to upload

Every other platform in this series hands you somewhere to put bytes. Astro builds a route, Next.js has public/, Webflow takes an upload, Ghost renders a template. Squarespace has none of that, and it is explicit about why.

Its guide on image and file URLs, last updated 22 May 2026, says that anything you upload is stored by its CDN providers and assigned a static URL on images.squarespace-cdn.com, static.squarespace.com or static1.squarespace.com. The same article adds, in its own words, that "it's not possible to customize or redirect a static asset URL."

The obvious workaround is to upload the file anyway and point /llms.txt at it with a redirect. Squarespace closes that too. Its URL mappings guide, last updated 14 January 2026, says verbatim: "You can't redirect image or file URLs, because static assets are stored by our content delivery network service providers (CDNs)."

So the built-in setting is not the convenient path. It is the only path.

Turn on the LLMS.txt tab

Squarespace shipped a dedicated editor for this. From its guide "Create an llms.txt file", last updated 22 July 2026:

1. Open the SEO/AI Visibility panel.
2. Click SEO Settings, then click the LLMS.txt tab.
3. The file is disabled by default. Paste your Markdown into the text field to enable it.
4. Click Save.

To switch it off later, return to the same tab, click Delete, and click Save again. There is no separate toggle. The presence of text is what turns the file on.

Squarespace declines to tell you what to write. Its guide says, verbatim, "We can't offer specific advice on creating text for your llms.txt file, as it's a proposed standard that's still actively in development." That is a fair position and it leaves the content entirely to you.

What to put in the box

The specification at llmstxt.org, proposed by Jeremy Howard of Answer.AI and last modified 10 August 2026, requires exactly one thing: an H1 with your project name. Everything after that is convention. A short blockquote summary and one or two ## sections of Markdown links will pass and will actually be readable:

# Ridgeline Studio

> Interior design studio in Leeds. Residential projects, fees and process.

## Core pages
- [Services](https://example.com/services): What we do and typical project scope.
- [Fees](https://example.com/fees): Day rates and fixed-fee bands.
- [Contact](https://example.com/contact): Enquiry form and studio address.

## Background
- [About](https://example.com/about): Studio history and the team.

Keep it short. Version 2 of the spec dropped the context-expansion tooling that treated the file as a content dump, and now asks agents to read the index and follow the links they need. A page-by-page mirror of your site is wasted effort.

Check the file is really live

Scan first. One command, no account, and it reads the same rubric this post is written against:

npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com

Read the C2 row. It passes when the file exists, returns 200, and contains an H1, at least one ## section and Markdown links. It does not require a particular content type, which surprises people.

If you would rather check by hand:

curl -sIL https://yoursite.com/llms.txt | grep -iE '^HTTP|^content-type'
curl -s https://yoursite.com/llms.txt | head -5

A working file returns 200 and your H1 as the first line. An empty response body with a 200 status means the field saved blank.

Two traps that look like the feature is broken

Your site is on 7.0. The LLMS.txt tab is documented for 7.1 sites only. If the tab is not there, the feature is not missing from your account, it is missing from your site version. Migrating from 7.0 to 7.1 is a rebuild rather than a switch, so this is a real decision and not a checkbox.

A trailing slash is fine here. Verified on 31 August 2026 against Squarespace's own site, which runs on Squarespace: /llms.txt/ returns a 301 to the file rather than a 404. That is the opposite of Astro, where an extension endpoint is unreachable with a trailing slash. If you came from our Astro guide, unlearn that reflex here.

One piece of good news, also measured on 31 August 2026: a request for a nonexistent root path such as /foo-not-real.txt returns a hard 404. Squarespace does not quietly redirect unknown paths to the homepage the way Ghost does, where a follow-redirects status check reports 200 on a site with no file at all. On Squarespace, a 404 means a 404.

Where AIScan fits, and where it doesn't

That last gap matters more than the file. Ahrefs measured about 137,000 sites on 15 June 2026 and found 28% publishing a valid llms.txt, with 97% of those files receiving zero requests during May 2026. Publishing the file is cheap and worth doing. Expecting traffic from it is not the same thing, and our evidence review goes through what the numbers actually support.

Your next move

Paste the block above into the LLMS.txt tab, adjust the links, save, then run npx aiscan-cli yoursite.com and read row C2. If you would rather generate the Markdown from your existing pages, the llms.txt generator does that, and the C2 reference lists every content-dimension check it sits alongside. The rest of the platform walkthroughs, including Webflow, are in the guides index.