[sonofhans]

If you can find a way to do it better or cheaper you’re welcome to try. No one else has. Don’t think it’s a small problem. The number of user agents and platforms supported by Tailwind would melt plenty of larger organizations.

[AlecSchueler]

This doesn't really answer my question and is quite a flippant response. I didn't claim I could do better, I'm asking why they need so many resources to do what they do.

[exceptione]

Maybe we accidentally found a more meaningful chance for having a discussion about LLMs.

As CSS is limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable and declarative, this should be a home run for LLMs.

[reassess_blind]

It is. That’s why Tailwind had to lay off 75% of their staff.

[AlecSchueler]

But they're still struggling for money.

[reassess_blind]

Yes, they’re struggling because a large part of their business was selling the pro product of pre-built themes, pages and components and whatever else.

Now, LLMs have all but killed that side of their business. The latest models are incredibly good at writing Tailwind, to the point where no one is buying the pre-builts.

[mexicocitinluez]

Nah, Tailwind is way more important for LLMs than vanilla CSS.

Models work in contexts. If my context is "my entire app's styling", then it's going to be really difficult to write styles in line unless it's already pretty perfect.

Tailwind doesn't have that problem. It's local. I can define a single theme and KNOW FOR A FACT how something will look before it even touches my code. That's the beauty of utility-like libraries.

I stopped working in marketing and advertising (which DID need custom styles), and went to strictly app dev where my needs completely changed.

[IsTom]

> limited in scope, ultra-well defined, testable

Are we talking about the same CSS?

[mexicocitinluez]

lol People don't realize that Tailwind democratized styling for a lot of people who didn't want to or didn't know how to write CSS. We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs. LLMs, by their nature, work better with Tailwind since it needs a much smaller context to make the right decision.

[doodlesdev]

   > We're not going back to writing hand-crafted CSS with or without LLMs.

A lot of us have never stopped writing hand-crafted CSS. Also, in my experience, Gemini 3 Pro is an absolute monster at writing layouts and styling in pure CSS with very basic descriptions of what I want (tested it while I was experimenting with vibe coding in some sleepless night LOL).

There are still a lot of developers who loathe using Tailwind and avoid touching it like the plague. Handwritten CSS still offers more opportunities for optimization and keeps your markup much cleaner than spamming utility classes everywhere (I understand the appeal of rapidly iterating with it, though).

[mexicocitinluez]

I apologize, I was being a bit hyperbolic.

I spent a decent amount of time working in marketing and ad agencies, and there are absolutely still needs for custom CSS in that area, so I agree.

I was more pushing back against the idea that Tailwind will be replaced by vanilla CSS because of LLMs.

[doodlesdev]

That I can agree with hahaha. Even though I'm not a fan of Tailwind, there's absolutely no reason developers who like utility libraries will abandon them because of LLMs.

[jpalomaki]

Agents are not yet very good at figuring out how things look on the screen.

Or at least in my experience this is where they need most human guidance. They can take screenshots and study those, but I’m not sure how well they can spot when things are a bit off.