Best practices

This page lists option settings for API reference, tutorials, and multi-language docs, plus notes on deployment, build time, and memory. For each option's full reference, see configuration options and content cleaning.

API documentation

Auto-generated API docs (OpenAPI output, for example) carry React component imports and short sections that repeat their own heading. Turn on both content-cleaning options and generate a single full-content file so an LLM can read the whole reference at once:

{
  excludeImports: true,           // Remove React component imports
  removeDuplicateHeadings: true,  // Remove lines that repeat an endpoint heading
  generateLLMsFullTxt: true,      // Write every page to one file
}

Both excludeImports and removeDuplicateHeadings are boolean and default to false, so you have to opt in.

Tutorial content

For hand-written tutorials and guides, clean up MDX imports but leave the prose alone, since duplicate-heading removal can strip content you wrote on purpose. Use includeOrder to set the reading order:

{
  excludeImports: true,           // Remove any MDX imports
  removeDuplicateHeadings: false, // Keep all content as written
  includeOrder: [                 // Reading order
    'getting-started/*',
    'tutorials/*',
    'advanced/*',
  ],
}

includeOrder is a string[] of glob patterns and defaults to []. Files that don't match any pattern are appended at the end, because includeUnmatchedLast defaults to true. Set it to false if you want includeOrder to act as a strict allowlist.

Multi-language documentation

If your docs cover more than one programming language, generate a separate file per language with customLLMFiles. Each entry needs a filename, an includePatterns array, and a fullContent flag:

{
  excludeImports: true,
  removeDuplicateHeadings: true,
  customLLMFiles: [
    {
      filename: 'llms-python.txt',
      includePatterns: ['**/python/**/*.md'],
      fullContent: true,
      title: 'Python Documentation',
    },
    {
      filename: 'llms-javascript.txt',
      includePatterns: ['**/javascript/**/*.md'],
      fullContent: true,
      title: 'JavaScript Documentation',
    },
  ],
}

customLLMFiles is an array and defaults to []. See custom LLM files for the full field reference, including ignorePatterns, orderPatterns, and per-file version.

Validating the deployed output

The plugin builds llms.txt from your site's build routes and can't see the deployed site. Host redirect rules, trailingSlash settings, and docs restructures can break the served llms.txt after a successful build, leaving an empty file or dead links.

llms-txt-check checks the deployed file against what your site serves:

- run: npx llms-txt-check https://your-docs-site.com

It exits nonzero when the file or any listed URL stops serving, so the deploy step fails when a route breaks. Run it as a final step in your deploy pipeline, after the site is live.

Build time and memory

The plugin does all its work in the postBuild hook, after Docusaurus has built the site, and the cleaning options add little time to that step.

The plugin holds every processed document in memory while it writes llms-full.txt, so memory use grows with the size of your docs. On a memory-constrained runner, give Node.js more heap with NODE_OPTIONS=--max-old-space-size=4096.