Is a 200 response enough?

It is a good start, but you also want to confirm the response is public and tied to the main domain, not a preview or hidden asset URL.

Why test in a private browser window?

Because logged-in sessions can hide access problems that external crawlers will still hit.

Yes. If the root URL does not render publicly, the publish step is not complete.

After hosting changes, routing changes, CMS migrations, or any deploy that could affect root-level files.

A practical verification routine for checking root placement, public access, and the mistakes that make teams think a file is live when it is not.

Reference page By llmstxt.ca editorial Published May 24, 2026 Updated May 24, 2026

Open https://yourdomain.com/llms.txt directly. If that URL does not load publicly, the file is not live in the way agents need.

The file lives in an uploads or assets URL instead of the root.
The URL redirects to a login, preview domain, or dashboard.
The content is only available in staging.
The file downloads in a strange way because it is being served from the wrong place.

This removes the false confidence that comes from being logged in to a CMS or platform admin session.

Every hosting or routing change is a chance to break the root path. Make verification part of your deployment checklist.

Use with: the publishing guide for setup instructions and the publishing mistakes page for QA.