How to Make Your Documentation AI-Agent Friendly (2026 Guide)

AI agents are becoming the primary way developers discover and use your product. Here's how to make sure they can actually read your docs.

The Problem: AI Agents Can't Read Your Docs#

You've spent months writing beautiful documentation. But when a developer asks Claude or ChatGPT "How do I authenticate with [your API]?", the AI either:

1. Makes things up (hallucination)
2. Gives outdated information from training data
3. Says "I don't have information about that"

Meanwhile, your competitors with AI-friendly docs are getting recommended instead.

Why This Matters in 2026#

The way developers discover tools has fundamentally changed:

• Cursor and GitHub Copilot read documentation to suggest code
• Claude and ChatGPT recommend tools based on their docs quality
• AI coding agents need to understand your API to integrate it

If AI can't read your docs, you're invisible to a growing segment of developers.

5 Steps to AI-Friendly Documentation#

1. Add an llms.txt File#

The most important step. llms.txt is a machine-readable index of your documentation that AI assistants can parse.

# Your API Name
 
> Brief description of what your API does.
 
## Getting Started
 
- [Quick Start](https://docs.yoursite.com/quickstart): Get up and running in 5 minutes
- [Authentication](https://docs.yoursite.com/auth): API keys and OAuth setup
 
## Endpoints
 
- [Users API](https://docs.yoursite.com/api/users): Create and manage users
- [Orders API](https://docs.yoursite.com/api/orders): Process orders and payments

Place this at yourdomain.com/llms.txt or docs.yourdomain.com/llms.txt.

Tools to help:

• Free llms.txt Generator - Create one in 2 minutes
• Dokly - Auto-generates llms.txt for all your docs

2. Use Structured Headings#

AI agents parse content hierarchically. Clear heading structure helps them understand context.

Bad:

Authentication
 
You need an API key. Go to the dashboard and create one.
Then use it in your requests. Here's how...

Good:

## Authentication
 
### Getting Your API Key
 
1. Navigate to **Dashboard → API Keys**
2. Click **Create New Key**
3. Copy the key (you won't see it again)
 
### Using Your API Key
 
Include the key in the `Authorization` header:

3. Write Complete Code Examples#

AI agents use code examples to generate suggestions. Incomplete examples lead to broken code.

Bad:

# Make a request
response = client.get(...)

Good:

import requests
 
API_KEY = "your_api_key_here"
BASE_URL = "https://api.yoursite.com/v1"
 
response = requests.get(
    f"{BASE_URL}/users",
    headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {API_KEY}"}
)
 
if response.status_code == 200:
    users = response.json()
    print(f"Found {len(users)} users")
else:
    print(f"Error: {response.status_code}")

4. Include OpenAPI/Swagger Specs#

If you have an API, provide a machine-readable specification. AI agents can directly parse OpenAPI specs to understand your endpoints.

openapi: 3.0.0
info:
  title: Your API
  version: 1.0.0
paths:
  /users:
    get:
      summary: List all users
      responses:
        '200':
          description: A list of users

Link to your spec prominently: "Download our OpenAPI spec for complete API details."

5. Create an llms-full.txt (Optional)#

For smaller documentation sites, consider llms-full.txt — a single file containing all your documentation content. AI agents can load this entirely into context.

# Your API Docs (Full)
 
## Authentication
 
Your API uses Bearer token authentication...
 
[Full content of each page]

This works best for docs under 50,000 tokens. Larger sites should stick with llms.txt links.

Quick Checklist#

Run through this checklist to assess your docs' AI-readiness:

• llms.txt exists at your docs root
• Headings are hierarchical (H1 → H2 → H3)
• Code examples are complete and runnable
• OpenAPI spec is available (for APIs)
• No JavaScript-only content (AI can't execute JS)
• Error messages are documented with solutions
• Authentication is explained first before other endpoints

Test Your Documentation#

Want to see how AI-friendly your docs are? Try this:

1. Open Claude or ChatGPT
2. Ask: "How do I [common task] with [your product]?"
3. Check if the answer is accurate and up-to-date

If the AI makes mistakes or says it doesn't know, your docs need work.

The Competitive Advantage#

Companies investing in AI-friendly docs today will have a significant advantage:

• Anthropic, Stripe, Vercel, Cloudflare already have llms.txt
• 844,000+ websites have implemented the standard
• MCP servers (Model Context Protocol) are the next frontier

The earlier you optimize, the more AI training data will reference your accurate documentation.

Get Started Today#

1. Generate your llms.txt file — free, takes 2 minutes
2. Audit your code examples — make them complete and runnable
3. Add structured headings — H1 for page title, H2 for sections, H3 for subsections

Or let Dokly handle it automatically. Every Dokly docs site includes:

• Auto-generated llms.txt
• Structured MDX content
• AI-optimized formatting

Create your AI-ready docs — free →