# humans.txt

Category: [Technical SEO](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/technical-seo/) › [CMS, operations & special files](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/technical-seo/cms-operations-special-files/)

**humans.txt** is a text file in the root of a website that names the people who built it, such as developers, designers and writers. The initiative at humanstxt.org describes it as an initiative for knowing the people behind a website. Unlike robots.txt, it is not meant for crawlers.

## How is it built?
The file is called `humans.txt`, lives at the site root and is UTF-8 encoded. The initiative suggests two main sections, marked in comment syntax:
- `/* TEAM */` for roles, names and contact details
- `/* SITE */` for the last update (YYYY/MM/DD), standards, components and tools

An optional `/* THANKS */` section is possible. A link element can point to the file from the `<head>`, for example `<link rel="author" href="humans.txt">`.

The initiative presents the file as a counterpart to robots.txt, which holds information for search bots, and does not name search engines as an audience. None of the sources read ties it to rankings.

## Example
```txt
/* TEAM */
Web developer: Jane Doe
Location: Berlin

/* SITE */
Last update: 2026/10/06
Standards: HTML5, CSS3
```

## Common mistakes
- Private email addresses appear in the open file.
- Internal details, such as credentials or server paths, end up in it.

## At a glance

- **Type:** Text file (community initiative, no formal specification)
- **Visible?:** public at /humans.txt
- **Affects:** people, not crawlers
- **Docs:** [humanstxt.org: standard and quick start](https://humanstxt.org/Standard.html)

Last checked: October 8, 2026

## Machine-readable site files compared

| File | Standard or proposal? | Location | Purpose | Who reads it (documented) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| robots.txt | IETF standard: RFC 9309 (September 2022) | /robots.txt | tells crawlers which URLs they may fetch; per the RFC not a form of access authorization | Crawlers; Google's common crawlers always respect it for automatic crawls |
| llms.txt | Proposal (Jeremy Howard, 2024; version 2 from August 2026) | /llms.txt or in a subpath | Markdown overview linking to Markdown versions of pages, for AI agents | per the proposal mainly coding agents; Google Search ignores it, says Google; Lighthouse only checks the fetch |
| llms-full.txt | no specification; not part of the llms.txt proposal, a convention of individual vendors (e.g. Mintlify) | /llms-full.txt (Mintlify also serves /.well-known/llms-full.txt) | entire documentation as Markdown in one file | no reader documented; Google Search doesn't use such files, says Google |
| ai.txt | Individual IETF Internet-Draft (June 2026, expires 2026-12-14), not a standard; predecessor by Spawning (2023) | /.well-known/ai.txt (draft), /ai.txt (Spawning) | AI usage preferences (training, scraping, indexing, caching), licensing, attribution | no reader documented in primary sources; Google Search doesn't use 'AI text files', says Google |
| TDMRep (tdmrep.json) | W3C Community Group Final Report (2024-05-10), not a W3C standard | /.well-known/tdmrep.json, HTTP header tdm-reservation or HTML meta tag | machine-readable reservation of text and data mining rights (Art. 4 DSM Directive) | parties performing text and data mining (per the specification) |
| security.txt | RFC 9116 (April 2022, informational, not standards track) | /.well-known/security.txt | contact for reporting security vulnerabilities; required fields Contact and Expires | Security researchers |
| ads.txt | IAB Tech Lab specification, version 1.1 (August 2022) | /ads.txt on the root domain, subdomains as needed | declares the companies authorized to sell the site's ad inventory | advertising systems and buyers (ad system crawlers) |
| humans.txt | Initiative (humanstxt.org), no formal specification | /humans.txt next to robots.txt, optionally linked via rel="author" | names the people who contributed to the website | people who want to know who is behind the website |

Sources: [RFC 9309: Robots Exclusion Protocol](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9309.html); [Google: Overview of Google crawlers and fetchers (last updated 2026-06-12)](https://developers.google.com/crawling/docs/crawlers-fetchers/overview-google-crawlers); [The /llms.txt file, v2 (llmstxt.org)](https://llmstxt.org/); [llmstxt.org: Changes (v2, August 2026)](https://llmstxt.org/changes.html); [Google Search Central: Optimizing for generative AI features (last updated 2026-07-10)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/ai-optimization-guide); [Chrome for Developers: Lighthouse llms.txt audit (2026-05-05)](https://developer.chrome.com/docs/lighthouse/agentic-browsing/llms-txt); [Mintlify: llms.txt and llms-full.txt](https://www.mintlify.com/docs/ai/llmstxt); [IETF Internet-Draft draft-car-ai-txt-wellknown-00 (2026-06-12)](https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-car-ai-txt-wellknown-00.html); [W3C TDMRep Community Group: TDM Reservation Protocol, Final Report 2024-05-10](https://www.w3.org/community/reports/tdmrep/CG-FINAL-tdmrep-20240510/); [RFC 9116: A File Format to Aid in Security Vulnerability Disclosure](https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9116.html); [IAB Tech Lab: ads.txt](https://iabtechlab.com/ads-txt/); [IAB Tech Lab: ads.txt Specification Version 1.1 (GitHub)](https://github.com/InteractiveAdvertisingBureau/Supply-Chain-Validation/blob/main/ads.txt%20v1.1.md); [humanstxt.org](https://humanstxt.org/). Last checked: October 8, 2026

## Related terms

- [security.txt](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/security-txt/index.md)
- [ads.txt](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/ads-txt/index.md)
- [robots.txt](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/robots-txt/index.md)

## Sources

- [humans.txt – humanstxt.org](https://humanstxt.org/)
- [humans.txt standard – humanstxt.org](https://humanstxt.org/Standard.html)

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Last updated: October 8, 2026
URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/humans-txt/