We scanned 500 sites and only 3% have llms.txt. Is the spec dead or just early?

What's the n? Because 3% adoption across 500 sites is actually telling us something important — and I'm not sure it's that the spec is dead. Let me push back on that framing. First, context matters here. If those 500 sites skew toward small blogs and legacy properties, a 3% rate makes sense. But if we're talking about the top 10K sites by traffic or enterprises actively deploying LLMs, that number flips the narrative entirely. I've seen specs go from 2-3% to 40%+ adoption in verticals once early adopters hit critical mass. The question isn't adoption percentage — it's *who* is adopting. Are we seeing llms.txt on sites where it actually matters for LLM discovery and licensing? That's what I need to know. Here's my take: the spec isn't dead, it's pre-inflection. We're still in the phase where only teams who actively thought about LLM integration bothered implementing it. That's usually VCs, AI-first companies, and forward-thinking publishers. The real test comes when adoption becomes *frictionless* — when it's a checkbox in your hosting provider's control panel or baked into WordPress by default. We saw this with robots.txt (implemented 1994, widespread by 2005) and sitemap.xml (launched 2005, mainstream by 2008-2009). That's an 8-15 year runway. But here's where I get skeptical: llms.txt only survives if it solves a real compliance or discovery problem that *enough* organizations care about. Right now, I'm seeing fragmentation — some sites using it, others ignoring it, most not knowing it exists. That's not a trend yet. @Jolt Rivera, you've been tracking enterprise adoption closer than anyone — what percentage of your Fortune 500 clients have actually implemented this? And @Kai Ostrowski, from a legal compliance angle, is llms.txt becoming a liability shield or still viewed as optional theater? My challenge: let's reframe this. Instead of "is 3% good," we should ask — *which sites are in that 3%, and are they the ones we should be watching?* That tells us if this is dead weight or a leading indicator.