Documentation as a single file for LLM use

[KevinGage]

I love that tailwind provides a repo to run documentation offline. It would be really useful if the entire documentation could be provided in one single large pdf or mdx file. Then users could utilize the documentation in their LLM tools like chatgpt, llama, etc.
I found a couple of old reddit threads about people doing this on their own but no one shared their tooling and the files they generated are now out of date or no longer available.

[abegehr]

An llm.txt for tailwinds v4 docs would be great! many packages offer this. F.e. DaisyUI: https://daisyui.com/llms.txt

[haltsir]

I hope this gets picked up soon, it's a very easy solution for a very common problem.

[DhvanilPatel]

would be super super helpful! +1

[marijnbent]

Please add this <3

[renanyudimt]

that would be great

[mercury7design]

Definitely need this

[Rigo-m]

Would be great +1

[ConstantinHvber]

As a workaround you can download the docs at
https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com , feed them into something like codebasedigest and then have gemini create a LLMs file from it.

This is the one I just generated, I can't vouch for its completeness, but it works for me:
https://gist.github.com/ConstantinHvber/0e521eafaa34e9a70f2254ae8c629ad0

[backnotprop]

Issue are this point.

I did what @ConstantinHvber suggested but didnt want to use a python lib. I used https://github.com/backnotprop/prompt-tower and fed the tailwind repo to Gemini.

v4 Migration guide I use: https://gist.github.com/backnotprop/936b1e83ede4b472d174925402dd919c

[sovetski]

+1 for this

[bayraak]

+1

[MGSimard]

+1

[Avaray]

+1

[7heMech]

+1 https://llmstxt.org/

[ezhupa99]

+1

[laszlo-ratesic]

Oh one more thing. Tailwind is what allowed me to finally wrap my head around CSS which I found to be the biggest pain in my ass at the start of my career. Because of Tailwind I was able to start a pretty fruitful career as a frontend developer and would finally move on to becoming a Space Ops Cloud Developer. When I got my NASA badge my mom sent me a text saying she was proud of me and that was an insanely big deal for me.

So Tailwind made my mom proud of me. Money can't buy that!

[GabrielBigardi]

Hi, i'm sorry to hear about the situation, but just to make sure: is the minimum donation I can make to Tailwind really $120?

Tailwind is a really great tool, but this amount is unrealistic for developers in many countries. I think if you let users choose the donation amount, you would get way more funding given how many people use it.

If that's not possible and AI is really destroying the current business model, why not use it to get more money? Having paid MCP servers or something similar could work, there are a lot of ways to counter this with AI itself.

[ScriptType]

@mtsears4 Sorry but im not sure about this.
Don't get me wrong i myself bought the book and plus, and i am absolutely happy about this.
https://tailwindcss.com/sponsor
but if we look here and only looking at the partners its like 80k a month only from sponsorship (not counting the smaller sponsors),
Than they could easily pay 7 devs 8k-10k +1k (insurance) than there is still 3k-14k $ left for all the other expenses and this again only counted the Partner Sponsors.
If you count in all the other sponsors it easily adds another 15k, Than you have to add to this the money they get from their "normal" sells.
They should have before other expenses and before tax around 30-40k $ left.

If we switch it up right now they have from sponsors alone like 95k $ a month for 4 people + infrastructure.

EDIT: But maybe the page is just not updated?

[msears124]

@mtsears4 Sorry but im not sure about this. Don't get me wrong i myself bought the book and plus, and i am absolutely happy about this. https://tailwindcss.com/sponsor but if we look here and only looking at the partners its like 80k a month only from sponsorship (not counting the smaller sponsors), Than they could easily pay 7 devs 8k-10k +1k (insurance) than there is still 3k-14k $ left for all the other expenses and this again only counted the Partner Sponsors. If you count in all the other sponsors it easily adds another 15k, Than you have to add to this the money they get from their "normal" sells. They should have before other expenses and before tax around 30-40k $ left.

If we switch it up right now they have from sponsors alone like 95k $ a month for 4 people + infrastructure.

EDIT: But maybe the page is just not updated?

Key word here is BEFORE taxes, and before OTHER expenses.

Marketing costs money, events and conferences cost money, team travel costs money, technology equipment costs money, and then you add the tax burden on top, as well as putting money for the future into the company coffers, and you are indeed in a borderline scenario.

[ScriptType]

@msears124 but you pay taxes after your expenses not on the full income. Sorry to have 30-40k$ left every month is more than enough.
If they spend like 20k on anything than they have 10-20k and only on the unspend money you have to pay taxes.
Than they said they are down 80% which meant there was a time that they had like 450-500k$ income a month?

Sorry i am a big Tailwind fan really. And i think each of them deserves 100k a month personally without a doubt because of the impact, but sadly in open source its not really possible.
But still when you say a company with 95k$ a month can only pay 4 people than you are delusional.

[msears124]

@msears124 but you pay taxes after your expenses not on the full income. Sorry to have 30-40k$ left every month is more than enough. If they spend like 20k on anything than they have 10-20k and only on the unspend money you have to pay taxes. Than they said they are down 80% which meant there was a time that they had like 450-500k$ income a month?

Sorry i am a big Tailwind fan really. And i think each of them deserves 100k a month personally without a doubt because of the impact, but sadly in open source its not really possible. But still when you say a company with 95k$ a month can only pay 4 people than you are delusional.

It was 7 people, not 4, before they had to make layoffs. And that money may not be distributed equally, three of those people are founders, so if founder A is obligated 30% of income, and Founder B 20%, etc, it depends on how their ownership structure is setup. It is not split evenly. You also have to keep in mind they are in Canada which has a very high HCOL in the metro areas where devs often live.

And you also are not counting the cash discount rate. It may cost them $25k/mo in marketing to 'earn' that $95k/mo in income. Lots of other variables at play here.

[ScriptType]

I know that they were 7 peoples before the 95k$ was a min income they likely have more, the 25k could easily paid for "marketing".
They say they are down by 80% so they had around 450k$ a month for a short time so they could easily safe some money up.
Also when the structure is that Founder A get 30%, Founder B like in your theory than i would be even more mad.
Because making a post not being able to pay their devs and have to fire them just because they don't want to reduce their cuts?

And like i said don't get me wrong this guys revolutionized the frontend world so they deserve much much more money in my view, but i still dislike the way they are communicating it, because they had enough to pay everyone an ok-good amount of money so that everybody should have more enough to pay their expenses.
But than simply say it like this, and don't fire the devs because their own cut in the end is not high enough?

[raky291]

I’m really sorry to hear about the current situation with the Tailwind CSS team; it’s very sad news.

I was checking out the PRO components and templates to see if I should get a subscription, but to be honest, I was hoping for shadcn/ui support. I believe adding this could help you sell more PRO plans to even more developers. My current stack is Vercel + Next.js + shadcn/ui, and I don't have any plans to change it—I’m sure many other developers are in the same boat.

I’d recommend offering a collaboration or integration with shadcn/ui instead of competing against it. I think that would be a win-win for everyone.

[so-keyldzn]

Hey @adamwathan
First, I’m really sorry about the layoffs. Tailwind has been foundational to my work and countless others—it’s genuinely painful to see the business side struggle while the framework thrives.
I’ve been following this thread and wanted to share a concrete proposal based on what’s already working in the ecosystem.

Proposed Model for Tailwind
Free Tier: llms.txt
∙ Core utility classes reference
∙ Basic syntax for v4
∙ Links to docs + prominent Tailwind Plus CTAs
∙ Think of it as a “teaser” that makes LLMs aware Tailwind Plus exists
Pro Tier: Tailwind MCP Server ($X/month or lifetime)
∙ Complete v4 documentation with real-time updates
∙ Tailwind Plus component specs (for licensed users)
∙ Best practices from AGENTS.md (currently sponsor-only)
∙ IDE integrations (Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Claude Desktop)
∙ Priority context = better code generation = worth paying for

[dimsavva]

Hi @adamwathan

Sorry to hear about the layoffs. For the foundational framework tailwind css has become, especially in the AI world, this feels so unjust.

I'd like to offer spare time to help realize the future of Tailwind css, which will have to be AI integrated. I have worked alot in this space and am happy to contribute time and effort at no cost to make this happen for your commercial model. I have done alot of research in this space and am confident my contributions will help turn things around. Please reach out, it wont be a waste of your time. Dimitrios.
dimsavva@gmail.com

[BrunoGGM]

@adamwathan I am so sorry for the current situation. I know it's not easy to lay people off, and this must be a very difficult time for the team.

Tailwind CSS is fundamental to my daily work. It has greatly improved my experience as a developer and is the main tool in my job. As a gesture of gratitude, I have already subscribed to the $120 USD plan.

However, I believe some people want to help with other donations, and that option isn't currently available. I also think a little more transparency about the situation would help us all know how best to support and move the project forward.

I hope this difficult time doesn't cloud your judgment; a large part of the community is truly grateful and wants to help. Thank you to the entire team. I hope everything gets better soon!

[advocaite]

just do what unreal and other platforms do and give it out free but licence it so if you make a certain amount and then for the big huge companies using tail wind will have to pay more for it. personal - free pro 120$a month enterprise contact us

[7heMech]

Yeah man, if you make a low-cost AI plan with an MCP server or something and shove it down AI's throat via llms.txt and other means, we'll buy it.

[jumploops]

I created a Tailwind v4 migration guide that can be passed to LLMs with training cutoffs before Jan 2025 (when v4 was released)

I used GPT 5.2 Pro, which has a training cutoff of August 31st, 2025. It should be mostly correct, but may miss details from v4.1.13 and beyond.

It's not a forever solution, but some of y'all might find it useful.

Sidenote: @adamwathan please make a Tailwind-native AI UI tool (a la v0). I want a framework agnostic UI tool that not only generates N designs, but also creates a ui.md file for the design language I've iterated on. It's important that this lives outside my projects, as I want to limit context pollution from existing code/styles.

[kajackdfw]

Put a link in your paid product page area for a LLM Doc . It could reverse the traffic drop issue, as I chose to use version 3.4 because that was what the LLM new, so I had no reason to visit the tailwindcss website. If the LLM could utilize v4 I would visited the site docs for v4 or v4 product packages.

[Youssef-Amjad]

+1

[damianrebolo]

+1

[cemoktra]

Just change the license for the documentation that it is only for humans and every digital processing violates the license with a penalty of 10% of yearly revenue of the processing company.

[adamwathan]

I've got a branch up for this here, just need to polish the "Copy" button on the pages and review but can at least use this in the mean time if you need it:

https://tailwindcss-com-git-md-endpoints-tailwindlabs.vercel.app/

[adamwathan]

Eh this is more broken than I thought, I forgot I haven't actually even set up the llms.txt endpoint properly yet.

Here's a direct link to the file on the branch:

https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss.com/blob/md-endpoints/llms.txt

Trying to make it a very condensed version of the docs so it's token-efficient.

[pattobrien]

The effort is very much appreciated, adam!

Trying to make it a very condensed version of the docs so it's token-efficient.

FWIW, the current pattern that most OSS libs use revolves around progressive disclosure of docs sites; i.e. llms.txt is simply a markdown file that has a list of links to other .md docs pages throughout the site. This pattern makes it much easier to manage LLM context window sizes.

examples:

• zod
• nextjs
• better-auth

[barthamark]

Hey everyone, sharing something that worked well for us internally when using agents with Tailwind v4.

We put together an Agent Skill for Tailwind v4 that focuses on two things:

• Agent-optimized docs workflow: a script that creates a local docs snapshot + index map, so an agent can load only the relevant doc pages (and you can refresh it any time).
• A curated “gotchas” list we keep updating based on migration/dev work.

Important note: we don’t bundle or redistribute Tailwind docs. The skill just automates pulling a local snapshot after you explicitly accept the upstream docs license.

Everything else is in the repo readme: https://github.com/Lombiq/Tailwind-Agent-Skills