dealloc
While working on my new Phoenix 1.6 application I was annoyed that we still need to install NodeJS if we’d want to use TailwindCSS.
Then I stumbled across this blog post that introduces a standalone CLI for TailwindCSS (it mentions Phoenix by name!) to use TailwindCSS without having to use NodeJS.
So I built a small package that pretty much does exactly what esbuild does (which ships with Phoenix), but does it for the TailwindCSS CLI.
The idea is to make straightforward using Tailwind in your Phoenix (1.6+) application without needing to install NodeJS.
Links:
I threw it together rather quickly and it’s my first published package, so feedback is most definitely welcome, and I hope it proves useful to someone besides me.
Cheers
Trending in Discussions
As the title says, please share what you’ve been up to with Elixir. Whether that’s been learning it, looking into it, making stuff with i...
New
Hey there,
It’s been more than a year since we started using LiveView as our main UI library and building a whole library of UI componen...
New
I am happy to introduce the very α version of the new programming language compiled to BEAM.
Welcome Cure.
It has literally three kille...
New
Quite interesting article Google brought me. Didn’t find any mentions about it here.
What do you think in general? Would you use togethe...
New
Hi everyone!
The first release candidate for the Expert language server project is now available!
We’ve published a press release detai...
New
A little off-topic, but I feel like people here have a good head on their shoulders.
I used to be quite good at making software. Was luc...
New
Hi there! :wave:
@frigidcode and I (but mostly him) have been running an Elixir Book club, we’re almost done with Designing Elixir Syste...
New
Other Trending Topics
Edit: 2026 May 15 - This post is archived.
Mob is alive!!
Main docs: mob v0.7.11 — Documentation
A bit of explanation for the slightly c...
New
Hey, I’m Jesse and I’m the main contributor behind Dexter, a full-featured, lightning-fast Elixir LSP optimized for large codebases. It s...
New
Hobbes is a low-level distributed database for the Elixir programming language.
Hobbes provides a simple, safe, and scalable storage lay...
New
ExRatatui lets you cook up rich terminal UIs in Elixir, powered by Rust’s ratatui via Rustler NIFs. Build interactive terminal applicatio...
New
Just published claude-code-elixir, a plugin marketplace for Claude Code with Elixir support. These are the plugins I’ve been using for my...
New
Xamal is a deployment tool for Elixir apps that deploys native releases to bare metal servers over SSH. It’s a port of GitHub - basecamp/...
New
Latest Phoenix Threads
Categories:
Sub Categories:
Forums
Popular Tags
- #ecto
- #liveview
- #troubleshooting
- #learning-elixir
- #library
- #deployment
- #erlang
- #testing
- #genserver
- #mix
- #absinthe
- #remote-other
- #otp
- #plug
- #how-to-question
- #macros
- #postgres
- #elixirconf
- #channels
- #exunit
- #discussion
- #code-sync
- #podcasts
- #javascript
- #onsite
- #dialyzer
- #docker
- #authentication
- #umbrella
- #full-time-contract
- #podcasts-by-brainlid
- #ai
- #ecto-query
- #elixirconf-us
- #blog-post
- #elixir-ls
- #phoenix_html
- #iex
- #graphql
- #genstage
- #websockets
- #supervisor
- #advent-of-code
- #distillery
- #processes
- #elixirconf-eu
- #api
- #forms
- #metaprogramming
- #hex











Showing Posts 1 to 10- Show Best Posts
- Show All (oldest first)
- Show All (newest first)
chrismccord
Hey @dealloc – Nice work! The phoenix team actually went to start on this very thing today. Any interest in transferring to the Phoenix org so we can own esbuild and tailwind packages without duplicating efforts?
dealloc
hey @chrismccord of course! Had I known you guys were working on this I would’ve patiently waited
If you can give me some guidance on how to get that started I’m more than glad to transfer!
chrismccord
For the hex package:
Then on GitHub, got to the settings page and near the bottom is the “Danger Zone”, and you can click transfer and transfer to the
phoenixframeworkorg.https://github.com/dealloc/tailwind_cli/settings
Thanks for doing the leg work on this! I am beyond excited that we now have a dependency-free tailwind experience for phoenix users!
dealloc
I transferred ownership for the hex package, but when I try to move the Github repository into
phoenixframeworkI get the error “You don’t have permission to create public repositories on phoenixframework”any workaround?
I was so excited when I came across the dependency free Tailwind CLI that I just had to integrate it, esbuild did it so effortlessly I couldn’t resist building something similar
chrismccord
Thanks so much! I’ll push the repo up on my side

Sebb
How can I use Tailwind CSS IntelliSense - Visual Studio Marketplace when installing tailwind with this package?
I get this error from the plugin:
So the plugin finds the generated
tailwind.config.jsbut nottailwindcss.When I install with
the plugin works.
chrismccord
You’ll need to copy the binary to somewhere in your $PATH if the vscode plugin requires it to be available globally
Sebb
I copied
_build/tailwind-linux-x64to the path, also tried renaming totailwindcss- still does not work. Alsonpm i -g tailwindcssdoes not work.sodapopcan
This is really very exciting! And kudos to the tailwind folks for accommodating to those of us who don’t care much for nodejs.
andrewb
Thanks @dealloc and @chrismccord, I heard about this today and spent 15 mins updating my blog to remove NodeJS and the other dependencies.
It all worked a treat and I documented what I did here.
Thanks again guys.