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Robots Txt

Business
robots-txt

Robots Txt is an Agent Skill for business published in the thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Use when applies to any public website. Use when auditing technical SEO foundations or diagnosing crawl coverage gaps.

View on GitHub ↗
QUICK START

How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist/blob/HEAD/skills/robots-txt/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/robots-txt, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

Publish a robots.txt file

robots.txt is the first file crawlers fetch; misconfigured directives can silently block search engines from crawling your entire site, killing organic visibility.

Quick Reference

  • Serve a valid robots.txt at /robots.txt on the production domain, returning HTTP 200
  • Include a Sitemap: directive pointing to your XML sitemap
  • Never disallow crawling of CSS/JS assets that render your pages
  • Avoid blocking all crawlers with Disallow: / on a live site

Check

Fetch /robots.txt on the live domain and verify it returns HTTP 200, uses correct User-agent / Disallow / Allow syntax, and includes a Sitemap: directive pointing to the XML sitemap. Check for accidental Disallow: / directives.

Fix

Create or update robots.txt at the web root with valid directives. Add a live Sitemap: line for the production sitemap URL. Remove any Disallow: / rules that block the whole site or resources needed for rendering.

Explain

Explain how robots.txt controls crawler access, why an accidental Disallow: / can delist a site, and why CSS/JS must remain accessible for rendering-based indexing.

Code Review

Review metadata generation, rendered HTML, structured data, and response headers related to Publish a robots.txt file. Flag exact routes or templates where search-facing output violates the rule, and describe how to verify the final page output.

For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance, see references/rule.md.

Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/en/rules/seo/robots-txt