aeo.js

Answer Engine Optimization for the modern web. Make your site discoverable by AI crawlers and LLMs.

What is AEO?

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) is the practice of making your website discoverable and citable by AI-powered answer engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and SearchGPT.

aeo.js auto-generates the files these engines look for and provides a drop-in widget that shows visitors how your site appears to AI.

Features

• llms.txt / llms-full.txt -- LLM-readable summaries of your site
• robots.txt -- AI-crawler-aware robots directives
• sitemap.xml -- Standard sitemap generation
• docs.json -- Structured documentation manifest
• ai-index.json -- AI-optimized content index
• Raw Markdown -- Per-page .md files extracted from your HTML
• Human/AI Widget -- Drop-in toggle showing the AI-readable version of any page

Supported Frameworks

Install

npm install aeo.js

Quick Start

Next.js

Wrap your Next.js config with withAeo:

// next.config.mjs
import { withAeo } from 'aeo.js/next';

export default withAeo({
  aeo: {
    title: 'My Site',
    description: 'A site optimized for AI discovery',
    url: 'https://mysite.com',
  },
});

After building, run the post-build step to extract content from pre-rendered pages:

{
  "scripts": {
    "postbuild": "node -e \"import('aeo.js/next').then(m => m.postBuild({ title: 'My Site', url: 'https://mysite.com' }))\""
  }
}

Astro

Add the integration in your Astro config:

// astro.config.mjs
import { defineConfig } from 'astro/config';
import { aeoAstroIntegration } from 'aeo.js/astro';

export default defineConfig({
  site: 'https://mysite.com',
  integrations: [
    aeoAstroIntegration({
      title: 'My Site',
      description: 'A site optimized for AI discovery',
      url: 'https://mysite.com',
    }),
  ],
});

Webpack

Add the plugin to your webpack config:

// webpack.config.js
const { AeoWebpackPlugin } = require('aeo.js/webpack');

module.exports = {
  plugins: [
    new AeoWebpackPlugin({
      title: 'My Site',
      description: 'A site optimized for AI discovery',
      url: 'https://mysite.com',
    }),
  ],
};

Configuration

import { defineConfig } from 'aeo.js';

export default defineConfig({
  // Required
  title: 'My Site',
  url: 'https://mysite.com',

  // Optional
  description: 'A description of your site',
  contentDir: 'docs',        // Directory with handwritten .md files
  outDir: 'public',          // Output directory for generated files

  // Toggle individual generators
  generators: {
    robotsTxt: true,          // robots.txt
    llmsTxt: true,            // llms.txt
    llmsFullTxt: true,        // llms-full.txt
    rawMarkdown: true,        // Per-page .md files
    manifest: true,           // docs.json
    sitemap: true,            // sitemap.xml
    aiIndex: true,            // ai-index.json
  },

  // Customize robots.txt
  robots: {
    allow: ['/'],
    disallow: ['/admin'],
    crawlDelay: 0,
  },

  // Widget configuration
  widget: {
    enabled: true,
    position: 'bottom-right', // 'bottom-left' | 'top-right' | 'top-left'
    humanLabel: 'Human',
    aiLabel: 'AI',
    showBadge: true,
    theme: {
      background: 'rgba(18, 18, 24, 0.9)',
      text: '#C0C0C5',
      accent: '#E8E8EA',
      badge: '#4ADE80',
    },
  },
});

Widget

The Human/AI widget is a floating toggle that lets visitors switch between the normal page and its AI-readable markdown version. It's automatically injected by the Astro integration. For Next.js, you can add it manually:

// app/layout.tsx (or any client component)
'use client';
import { useEffect } from 'react';

export function AeoWidgetLoader() {
  useEffect(() => {
    import('aeo.js/widget').then(({ AeoWidget }) => {
      new AeoWidget({
        config: {
          title: 'My Site',
          url: 'https://mysite.com',
          widget: { enabled: true, position: 'bottom-right' },
        },
      });
    });
  }, []);
  return null;
}

When a visitor clicks AI, the widget:

1. Fetches the .md file for the current page
2. Falls back to extracting markdown from the live DOM if no .md exists
3. Displays the markdown with syntax highlighting
4. Offers copy-to-clipboard and download actions

Generated Files

After building, your output directory will contain:

public/
  robots.txt          # AI-crawler-aware directives
  llms.txt            # Short LLM-readable summary
  llms-full.txt       # Full content for LLMs
  sitemap.xml         # Standard sitemap
  docs.json           # Documentation manifest
  ai-index.json       # AI-optimized content index
  index.md            # Markdown for /
  about.md            # Markdown for /about
  ...                 # One .md per discovered page

License

MIT