Tailwind CSS Development

When to Apply

Activate this skill when:

• Adding styles to components or pages
• Working with responsive design
• Implementing dark mode
• Extracting repeated patterns into components
• Debugging spacing or layout issues

Documentation

Use search-docs for detailed Tailwind CSS v4 patterns and documentation.

Basic Usage

• Use Tailwind CSS classes to style HTML. Check and follow existing Tailwind conventions in the project before introducing new patterns.
• Offer to extract repeated patterns into components that match the project's conventions (e.g., Blade, JSX, Vue).
• Consider class placement, order, priority, and defaults. Remove redundant classes, add classes to parent or child elements carefully to reduce repetition, and group elements logically.

Tailwind CSS v4 Specifics

• Always use Tailwind CSS v4 and avoid deprecated utilities.
• corePlugins is not supported in Tailwind v4.

CSS-First Configuration

In Tailwind v4, configuration is CSS-first using the @theme directive — no separate tailwind.config.js file is needed:

<code-snippet name="CSS-First Config" lang="css"> @theme { --color-brand: oklch(0.72 0.11 178); } </code-snippet>

Import Syntax

In Tailwind v4, import Tailwind with a regular CSS @import statement instead of the @tailwind directives used in v3:

<code-snippet name="v4 Import Syntax" lang="diff"> - @tailwind base; - @tailwind components; - @tailwind utilities; + @import "tailwindcss"; </code-snippet>

Replaced Utilities

Tailwind v4 removed deprecated utilities. Use the replacements shown below. Opacity values remain numeric.

Deprecated	Replacement
bg-opacity-*	bg-black/*
text-opacity-*	text-black/*
border-opacity-*	border-black/*
divide-opacity-*	divide-black/*
ring-opacity-*	ring-black/*
placeholder-opacity-*	placeholder-black/*
flex-shrink-*	shrink-*
flex-grow-*	grow-*
overflow-ellipsis	text-ellipsis
decoration-slice	box-decoration-slice
decoration-clone	box-decoration-clone

Spacing

Use gap utilities instead of margins for spacing between siblings:

<code-snippet name="Gap Utilities" lang="html"> <div class="flex gap-8"> <div>Item 1</div> <div>Item 2</div> </div> </code-snippet>

Dark Mode

If existing pages and components support dark mode, new pages and components must support it the same way, typically using the dark: variant:

<code-snippet name="Dark Mode" lang="html"> <div class="bg-white dark:bg-gray-900 text-gray-900 dark:text-white"> Content adapts to color scheme </div> </code-snippet>

Common Patterns

Flexbox Layout

<code-snippet name="Flexbox Layout" lang="html"> <div class="flex items-center justify-between gap-4"> <div>Left content</div> <div>Right content</div> </div> </code-snippet>

Grid Layout

<code-snippet name="Grid Layout" lang="html"> <div class="grid grid-cols-1 md:grid-cols-2 lg:grid-cols-3 gap-6"> <div>Card 1</div> <div>Card 2</div> <div>Card 3</div> </div> </code-snippet>

Common Pitfalls

• Using deprecated v3 utilities (bg-opacity-, flex-shrink-, etc.)
• Using @tailwind directives instead of @import "tailwindcss"
• Trying to use tailwind.config.js instead of CSS @theme directive
• Using margins for spacing between siblings instead of gap utilities
• Forgetting to add dark mode variants when the project uses dark mode