Every Shopify store already serves an agents.md and an llms.txt. You do not need an app to have them, and most stores do not need to change them. If you change anything, change the few facts a shopping agent cannot work out from your product pages. Nobody, Shopify included, has shown that either file affects where a store appears in an AI answer.
That is the short answer. The rest of this post shows what the files actually say, because most articles about them describe the files without quoting one.
How we checked
On 12 November 2026, at about 23:13 UTC, we fetched /agents.md, /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt from three Shopify stores:
- theme-dawn-demo.myshopify.com and theme-horizon-demo.myshopify.com, Shopify's demo stores for its Dawn and Horizon themes. Nothing in these files has been customised, so they show Shopify's default.
- williampainter.com, a sunglasses store that runs AgentReady as one of our lab stores. Its file is customised.
We also tried our other lab sites. Only William Painter runs on Shopify; the rest are not Shopify stores or were offline that day, so they are left out.
What Shopify serves on every store
Shopify's help center says it plainly: "Every Shopify store automatically serves the following discovery URLs". The three URLs are /agents.md, /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt. Shopify calls /agents.md "your canonical agent discovery URL" and describes the other two as "compatible with older AI crawlers".
Your default robots.txt points agents here too: its opening comment block names /agents.md alongside the store's UCP endpoints. We quote that file in does Shopify's default robots.txt block AI crawlers.
Shopify also says that "by default, all three URLs return the same content". On the Dawn demo that held, with one difference: the last line of each file names the file you are reading. In /llms.txt it reads:
- Agent discovery: the canonical agent-facing description of the store is at `/agents.md`. You're reading `/llms.txt`, which mirrors that content.
The default file, quoted
The default agents.md is about 5,500 characters. It is written for software, not for shoppers, and it is almost entirely about how to shop the store rather than what the store sells. Its sections on the Dawn demo are Shop skill, UCP integration (with direct MCP and browser WebMCP subsections), Interaction guidelines, Read-only browsing and Platform.
It opens like this:
You can browse products and shop at theme-dawn-demo's online store, https://theme-dawn-demo.myshopify.com, on your user's behalf.
The read-only section tells an agent where the public pages are:
- Discover public URLs through `/sitemap.xml`.
- Read product pages at `/products/{handle}`.
- Browse collections at `/collections/all` or `/collections/{handle}`.
The interaction rules require buyer approval before an order and ask agents to identify themselves:
- **Rate limits** - Back off on `429` responses and respect `Retry-After` when provided.
(The live file uses a dash character between the label and the rule; we changed it to a hyphen here.)
The Horizon demo's file is the same text with its own store name, plus one extra section, because that store has policies set up in its admin:
## Store Policies
- **Privacy policy**: https://theme-horizon-demo.myshopify.com/policies/privacy-policy
- **Terms of service**: https://theme-horizon-demo.myshopify.com/policies/terms-of-service
So the default is not one fixed file. Shopify builds it from your store, and it changes when Shopify changes it. What it never says is what you sell, who it is for, how sizing works, or what your returns promise is. An agent has to read your product and policy pages for that.
What a customised file adds
William Painter's /agents.md is about 9,800 characters, and its /llms.txt and /llms-full.txt are byte-for-byte the same file. It keeps the commerce endpoints from the default and adds facts about the store:
## What we sell
- **Sunglasses** (`/collections/sunglasses`)
- **Accessories** (`/collections/accessories`)
## Sizing & fit
All products are offered in one size with no fit variants or sizing options.
It also lists the store's policy pages, its markets, and the questions customers ask most often, with the store's own answers. That is the useful part of customising: one place where an agent can read what the store sells and what it promises, in the store's words.
The same file shows the cost. Its last line reads:
Maintained with AgentReady (v6) · Last updated: 2026-06-22.
Since that date, Shopify's default has gained guidance this file does not have, including the WebMCP browser tools and the request that agents identify themselves with Web Bot Auth. And its one-line Returns summary repeats the shipping summary instead of the returns policy. A default file would not have that slip, because a default file does not try to summarise your policies.
Shopify is clear about who owns a customised file. Its developer docs say to add a custom template "only when you have advanced requirements that the managed file doesn't cover", and that once you do, you "take responsibility for keeping its content current".
What is worth changing
If you customise, keep it short and factual. These are worth adding:
- What you sell, in plain words. Your main collections, with their URLs.
- Facts a product page does not make obvious. Sizing and fit, materials, what is in the box, who a product is not for.
- Your returns and warranty promise in one sentence each, checked against the policy page it summarises.
- The markets you sell to.
These are not worth adding:
- Keyword lists or claims about being the best. Agents read the file for facts.
- Contact details. Shopify's docs warn against outputting "potentially private merchant data", because the file is cached widely.
- Your own version of Shopify's agent rules. If you rewrite the checkout and rate-limit guidance, you have to keep up with every change Shopify makes to it.
How to customise the file
Shopify made the three paths customisable in May 2026. In your admin, go to Online Store > Themes > Edit code and add a template:
templates/agents.md.liquidsets/agents.md, and the other two paths use it unless they have their own template.templates/llms.txt.liquidsets/llms.txtonly.templates/llms-full.txt.liquidsets/llms-full.txtonly.
If a path has no template, Shopify falls back to your agents.md template, then to its own default. Delete your template and the default comes back. For a worked example, see how to customise agents.md on Shopify.
What nobody has shown
Be careful with anything that promises these files will get you recommended.
- Shopify describes
/agents.mdas telling "AI agents and shopping assistants how to discover the store's commerce capabilities". Its docs name no agent that reads the file and claim no ranking effect. - Google says you do not need AI text files to appear in Search, "as Google Search itself doesn't use them".
- llms.txt is, in its own words, "a proposal to standardise on using an
/llms.txtfile to provide information to help agents use a website". It names no answer engine that uses it. - AGENTS.md, the open format at agents.md, is "a README for agents" that lives in a code repository and guides coding agents. Shopify's public
/agents.mdpage is a separate convention that shares the name.
None of that makes the files useless. An agent that does read them gets accurate facts and the right way to check out. It does mean the honest reason to edit them is accuracy, not ranking. For how the three discovery files differ, see robots.txt vs llms.txt vs agents.md.
Where AgentReady fits
Shopify serves llms.txt and agents.md on every store. AgentReady generates better content for them from your real catalog. You paste the template once, and again when AgentReady flags a change. The AI discovery files page shows what it writes, and the agents.md and llms.txt docs cover setup.
To see what your own store serves today, and what an agent can and cannot read from it, run the free audit.
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