Why Not Just Use Tailwind?
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Why Not Just Use Tailwind?
Tailwind is popular, and for good reason. But it creates a dependency that buries your design decisions inside utility class names spread across every component. When you want to change your primary colour, you update a config file — but the colour only changes if every class that uses it was written correctly.
CSS custom properties (variables) are the alternative. They’re native to the browser, they cascade correctly, and they’re readable. When Claude Code generates a new component using var(--color-primary), that component automatically gets the right colour, because the definition lives in one place.
I use this approach across all eight of my Astro sites. The variable names are slightly different per project, but the structure is the same.