basic-crate.md

Basic crate

Generate llms.txt end to end for a small Rust crate.

When to use this

You have a Rust crate (a directory with Cargo.toml), it builds, and you want AI-readable documentation generated under target/doc/.

Prerequisites

• cargo build succeeds in the crate root
• rustdoc-llms installed (cargo install rustdoc-llms)
• rustdoc-md installed (cargo install rustdoc-md)

Steps

1. Change into the crate root:

   cd path/to/your-crate

2. Run the tool:

   rustdoc-llms

   Expected output:

   Generate documentation JSON file: target/doc/<crate_name>.json
   Generate documentation LLMS file: target/doc/llms.txt
   

3. Inspect the result:

   head -20 target/doc/llms.txt

Verify

test -f target/doc/<crate_name>.json && echo "JSON ok"
test -f target/doc/llms.txt && echo "LLMS ok"

Both commands should print their ok line.

Gotchas

• <crate_name> is the lib target name with - replaced by _. For a crate named foo-bar, the file is target/doc/foo_bar.json.
• If the crate has no [lib] section, the package name is used instead.
• target/doc/ is .gitignored by default in many setups; that is fine for the JSON file. Copy out (see copy-to-root.md) if you want to track llms.txt in git.