A Drupal recipe that makes a Varbase 11 site readable by AI tools. It serves
/llms.txt, built from the site name, slogan, main menu and footer menu, and a Markdown
version of every content item and taxonomy term, at <path>.md or for a request sent with Accept: text/markdown.
The HTML pages are unchanged.
Read the Varbase AI Readable Base documentation on the Varbase docs site.
# 1. Fetch the recipe.
ddev composer config --json extra.drupal-recipe-unpack.ignore '["drupal/varbase_ai_readable_base"]'
ddev composer require drupal/varbase_ai_readable_base:~1
# 2. Rebuild caches first, so Drupal sees the modules Composer just added.
ddev drush cr
# 3. Apply it.
ddev drush recipe ../recipes/varbase_ai_readable_base
ddev drush crDo not skip the first drush cr. Drupal caches its list of modules, so applying the recipe straight after
composer require stops with "llms_txt" is not a known module or theme (and the same for each Markdownify
module), even though the code is on disk. Nothing is changed when that happens: rebuild caches and apply again.
Then add the settings.php line below. Re-applying the recipe is safe. The ignore line keeps the recipe a locked
package: without it core's recipe-unpack plugin moves its requirements into the project's composer.json and drops
the recipe itself. If the project already ignores other packages, add this one to its list rather than replacing it.
On a project whose locked packages have open security advisories, Composer 2.9 can refuse a plain require. Require
this package on its own, as above: it adds only the recipe when llms_txt and markdownify are already there. Do
not run a full composer update to get past it.
Add this to web/sites/default/settings.php (or the settings file your hosting includes):
// Fast 404 answers every *.txt path before Drupal routes it, which hides the
// /llms.txt route of the llms_txt module. This is the module's default pattern
// with /llms.txt exempted next to /robots; every other .txt still fast-404s.
$settings['fast404_exts'] = '/^(?!\/robots)^(?!\/llms\.txt$)^(?!\/system\/files).*\.(txt|png|gif|jpe?g|css|js|ico|swf|flv|cgi|bat|pl|dll|exe|asp)$/i';Without it /llms.txt returns Fast 404's own XHTML 404 page over HTTP. A drush request does not go through
Fast 404, so a check from drush alone passes and hides the problem: always check with a real HTTP request:
curl -sI https://your-site.ddev.site/llms.txt | grep -iE '^(HTTP|content-type)'If the site already sets fast404_exts, add ^(?!\/llms\.txt$) to its pattern instead.
No cache clear is needed: Fast 404's 404 is not page-cached. A host that runs OPcache with validate_timestamps off
only picks up the changed settings.php after PHP restarts, which a deploy does.
GitLab CI on git.drupalcode.org (.gitlab-ci.yml) builds
a Varbase 11 site, applies this recipe twice and runs the Varbase functional testing suite in tests/ on it. See
tests/README.md to run it against a site of your own.