Elevator Pitch

• After migrating a couple of sites off Tailwind, the author rebuilt the parts they liked (reset, scales, utilities) while adopting a clearer, component-oriented vanilla CSS structure with more semantic HTML.

Key Takeaways

• Tailwind’s biggest lasting value was teaching “systems” (reset, palette, font scale) that can be replicated in vanilla CSS to avoid chaos.
• Organizing CSS by isolated “components” (unique class + separate file + no cross-overrides) makes changes safer and easier to reason about.
• Moving away from breakpoint-heavy utilities encouraged more flexible layouts (especially CSS Grid) and a lighter, more standards-based build approach.

Most Memorable Quotes

• “I spent the last week or so migrating a couple of sites away from Tailwind and towards more semantic HTML + vanilla CSS, and it was SO fun and SO interesting,”
• “Each ‘component’ has a unique class”
• “Ultimately Tailwind is limiting: if you want to do Weird Stuff in your CSS, it’s not always possible with Tailwind.”