Has AI killed Tailwind?

Key Takeaways

Hello, my front end friends. I just got a message on Blue Sky asking me for my opinion on what you can see on the screen right now. I should probably zoom in uh on this to make it a bit bigger for you. Uh normally I don't do this type of video. Let me know what you think of it. Uh and actually, let me find the original comment. It's on a tab over here. Uh right here. Let's go in. Uh Tailwind could disappear due to Gen AI. The thread seems to miss the point that AI training data in this case the Tailwind docs aren't free in cost of the consequences despite Adam Wam's response thoughts. Okay, so he linked directly to Adam's thoughts. I don't know at all what's happening. Uh but this sounds like something interesting. So let's go and before I get to what Adam said, let's go to the original post to see uh what this is. So this is a uh it's been closed as we can see here. And uh so it's saying add LM llm.txt endpoint that serves a a concatenated texton version of all Tailwind CSS documentation pages optimized for large language model consumption extract blah blah blah. We don't need to know the details but yes they want something that makes it easier for LLMs to use Tailwind. Um I will say LLMs do like like Tailwind. Um, and yeah, I guess it's if you're coding, you want to have something that makes it easier for them to do uh, you know, to use it properly is the idea. And I'm assuming I'm actually curious. I don't use Tailwind, first of all, uh, and I don't use a lot of AI stuff. I'm curious if there's issues with the AI because of the different versions of Tailwind that are out there. If it ends up actually getting things mixed up sometimes, just if you're doing it like in too general of a sense. And the idea here obviously would be you can point it at the actual docs of V4 and it would be able to do what you know to use it properly. Let's say uh so obviously uh a few outdated we're going to come down ready to be reviewed. Why is it not moving forward wondering? Um so first okay this isn't the one that was linked to originally. Uh why is this one not moving? have more important things to do like figure out how to make enough money for the business to be sustainable right now. And making it easier for LLMs to read our docs just means less traffic to our docs, which means less people learning about our paid product and the business being even less sustainable. Uh just don't have the time to work on things that don't help us pay the bills right now. Sorry. We may add this one day, but closing this right now. Uh overall, pretty positive responses. Uh but obviously some people are upset uh by it but I am glad to see most people are supporting um Adam trying to support his company. Um what a disappointing response. [laughter] I mean this is the person who opened it so obviously uh they would be disappointed by it. This is complimentary not replacement. Uh Paul saying as someone who has sponsored Taiwan CSS in the past this is a dis disappointing response. Would you like to disclose the fact that sponsoring gives one access to an official collection of LLM rules for Tailwind? Does that have anything to do with the rejection of this PR? Uh, you're running a business. That's cool, but you should disclose the fact that you are monetizing this, making Towend docs LLM friendly? I I don't have an opinion there cuz I don't know. Um, object to the spirit of closing this. It's very OSS unfriendly. I would not meaningfully reduce traffic to the docs by humans that actually would buy the product. Just bad vibes. I I totally get what they're saying here. Uh in terms of [laughter] I do question if it would not meaningfully reduce the amount of traffic uh by humans. Not completely sold on that. I think it would reduce the amount of traffic by humans. But uh anyway, uh here's a friendly tip for the Towin team that should already know. I will repeat anyway. If your goal is monetizing your software, then making it as easy to use for people's workflows is par 100%. Uh [clears throat] I I I have a general idea of how like I know how Tailwind monetizes. I know what their business model is to a certain extent. uh in terms of making it easy to use you definitely I definitely agree with this in terms of their business model I don't think this necessarily applies just because part of their business model is people like if if nobody is go even made aware of the fact that there is a pay product and it's just the AI is able not even that it's able to do it but if the AI is consuming the content and then just saying this is what you do and they never have to look for something themselves where they'd be made aware that there might be a paid product that makes it easier for them, then it doesn't really help. So, but I mean, I get what they're saying here. Uh, the more people that find your software fits into the workflow seamlessly and solves the pain of their daily interactions, the more people you have as potential monetization candidates. Yes, to a certain extent. Um, again, AI loves Tailwind. There's a lot of Tailwind stuff out there. So, it tends to default to React and Tailwind, right? That's just what it does. So, does that I'm I'm curious if that makes more people use Tailwind, learn about Tailwind, and then become potential monetization candidates or I don't know. I don't know enough on that. By scrapping the feature under the guise of monetization, you're sending the opposite message that you likely intend. You're telling your customers that getting money from them is more important than providing a service to help them. Tell me, would you enjoy doing business with a company who had a stance like that? This feature is so that people can build more things with Tailwind in a faster and more efficient capacity. From a business management perspective, if you remove the stmatic AI and LLM from the conversation, and you simply are evaluating a feature XYZ, which allows your customers to work in a more automated and efficient capacity with your software with minimal engineering effort. All it takes is a simple build-time script. Why would you not want to do that for your customers? Okay, a lot of leadup there. Let's see uh what the highlighted uh point here was. So, Adam said, "I totally see the value in the future and I would like to find a way to add it, but the reality is that 75% of the people on our engineering team lost their jobs. I did not know that. Holy cow." Okay. Wow. Uh, okay. 75% of people lost their jobs here yesterday. Yesterday? No. So, when he replied the other one, I think this is from 3 days ago from when I'm recording this. Uh, and I think his other one was Oh, that was uh that was also 3 days ago. But still like I thought it was the actual day. Um but I get also the tourist response there. Like obviously things are not going fantastic right now. Um so 75% of people lost their jobs yesterday because of the brutal impact AI has had on our business. And every second I spend trying to do fun free things for the community like this is a second I'm not spending trying to turn the business around and make sure that people who are still here are getting their paychecks every month. I mean, that is crazy that they've lost. They've had to cut 75% of the team. Uh, I feel really bad. Uh, maybe I'm just out of the loop. Maybe this was more well known and I'm just not in the right circles to be aware of that. Um, but holy cow, I feel I mean, I' I've said a lot of times, Tailwind isn't for me. It's not I I enjoy just writing CSS the way I write it. Uh, but I do know it's a a good resource for a lot of people. Tons of people love it. Tons of people rely on it. Uh, and I think that there's a lot of people who are better at CSS now because of than there were before. Uh, I got I I was a Bootstrap user and got very I learned a lot about CSS by using Bootstrap and I know other people have had the same thing with Tailwind. Um, so you know I I have there's all you know I would prefer people write just like learn CSS and use it and then I see it as a tool for people that are good with CSS already. If you understand CSS it can be a useful tool in the right situations. Uh, and my my biggest gripe with it has always been people relying on it that don't understand CSS cuz it's not a solution, it's just a different way to author it. Uh so that's always been my my big thing. Uh but you don't want to see a company that has contributed what they have uh to to be suffering in that way. So yeah, that's wild. Uh traffic to our docs is down about 40% from early 2023 despite Tailwind being more popular than ever. I am really I was I was sort of mentioning that AI loves Tailwind. So, like this is kind of crazy in a way because I think like AI is probably partially responsible for it continuing to become more popular, but at the same time, it's having a negative effect on the company. That's really interesting. Um, yeah. Uh, the docs are the only way people find out about our commercial products, and without customers, we can't afford to maintain the framework. I really want to figure out a way to offer LLM optimized docs that don't make the situation even worse. Again, we literally had to lay off 75% of the team yesterday. Um, [laughter] makes me happy. I'm basically a solo team. Uh, more or less I have. So, you know, obviously if I need to figure things out, uh, it it impacts me. But I'm I'm glad most there's nobody relying 100% on their salary on me. Uh I I don't know how I wouldn't be a good business owner. It's my own company. But anyway, that's Yeah, I firing [clears throat] people or laying people off, that would not be something I would ever want to do. Uh but I can't prioritize it right now, unfortunately. And I'm nervous to offer them without solving that problem first, 100%. Uh I don't see an agents I don't see the agents. This is Paul. Paul was the one mentioning that it was um as a sponsor you get access to an agent's file of some sort. So I don't see the agents MD stuff we offer as part of the sponsorship program is anything similar to this at all. That's just a short markdown file with a bunch of my own personal opinions and what I consider best practice to nudge LLM into writing their Tailwind stuff in a specific way. It's not the docs at all and I resent the accusation that I'm not disclosing my true intentions here or something. Yeah, that's fair enough. Uh this is a feature that uh this feature is that so more people can build more things faster, more efficient. Tow is growing faster than ever. It had its big and is bigger than it ever has been and our revenue is down close to 80%. This is just mind-blowing. Um, but again, I I think a large I think it I think a big part of it being as big as it is is AI just pushing people that way as well. But then having that negative effect is crazy. Uh, right now there's no no just correlation between making Towin easier to use and making development of the framework more sustainable. I need to fix that before making Tailwind easier to use. Uh, I need to fix that before making Towin easier to use benefits anyone. because if I can't fix that, this project is going to become unmaintained abandoned wear when there's no one left employed to work on it. I appreciate the sentiment and ingredient spirit. It's just more complicated than that in reality right now. Yeah, that's uh yeah, it's if he's seeing growth of the tool, but lower revenue, trying to get more people to use it is clearly not the solution because there are more people using it and revenue is dropping substantially. So, there has to be something else done. Uh this is kind I didn't realize Tailwind I mean in a sense this is a crisis for Tailwind uh that it's reached that point because if they can't monetize it and it does become abandoned wear like it could become an open- source project is the regular Tailwind open source I guess so. Um but it's not going to be the same if they don't have some sort of way to monetize it. Wow. That's I'm I'm curious how like the ramifications of this are potentially so big. Uh it's crazy the way that AI is impacting our industry in these like really weird ways. I see it myself just in terms of like the consumption of content, types of content. There's also the weird thing that happened with everybody exploding during the whole COVID and the pandemic and all of that. Uh obviously content creation on my side of things things exploded. Everyone is at home watching YouTube. Uh so I know a lot of creators, everybody I know just boom and then it dropped. But then that drop has been impacted as well by AI uh on top of that. But you're also seeing that in other places and I think this is part of it like I I I think I I really think there was this like double whammy uh happening in in broader senses in a lot of places. Um, yeah, that's crazy. Uh, I I don't know. They probably just keep going for a while. Uh, whether you could do something check out our paid product. I mean, I'm not Yeah, this is I think probably gets into more to more arguing. This Let's just see here. Um, you're blocking which prevents bots from crawling your site. So, finding how-to isn't a problem for LOMs. You're not blocking the robots text. I mean, yeah. I mean, this is the idea is that by not letting Tailwind get to your docs, [snorts] they're still able to like they know how to use Tailwind just through like having access to everything. So, are they just doing it badly or not as well? And that's sort of I think what is happening. Um, you could lose valuable traffic from LLM chat reference cuz SEO is on the brink of becoming outdated with ma major traffic sources now coming from LLM mentions on authority sites. I mean, that's always like this weird thing like how many people are actually clicking through though? Like it gives you an answer and it's like here's where I got the answer, you know? Are people really clicking through on that stuff? Uh, and this is also the hard thing is like I I don't think SEO is dead, but like questionbased SEO, right? like how do you do this? And like this impacts me as well in a different way because I'm educating people and so people aren't asking on YouTube or on Google as much. They're asking on they're asking the LLM uh and getting answers from that and so it impacts like such a wide range and I knew the impact it had on the educational sector. I'm seeing it. I didn't realize it would have this type of impact on a business uh like Tailwind at all. I never would have even thought uh it would have I would have thought the inverse because there is more users that it's actually growing more. So this is uh yeah um I don't remember what the initial question was but I I wish I guess I just I don't know what else to say about it other than like LLM's in a lot of ways it for a long time now the way I've thought about it is like they're eating themselves right like it it it becomes that the snake eating its own tail at one point because in terms of content creation which There's my side of things. People are making less incentivized to make content whether it's blog posts, videos, whatever it is. Uh that are I mean maybe you're making other types of content, the talking head things like this. This isn't educational. This is just I don't know. It's talking head. Um but like my educational stuff, the blog posts especially like they've been ravaged. So, like if that's not coming out and there's all these new features coming out still, like who's writing about them? Who's educating on them? And then the LLM doesn't have that content to train on anymore. And it seems to be this is impacting other businesses in other ways that I've never considered cuz it's not something that has been directly impacted to me. So, like, but obvious job markets and everything else. Um, so yeah, I don't know what the solution is. I wish I did. I'd like to know people's opinions on this down in the comments below. So, yeah, I've just been like sitting here for like 10 seconds that I edit out like blankly staring off trying to figure out how to end this video in a not depressing way. And I don't know how to do that. Uh other than just to say like I guess this is all the more reason to try and make our own corners of the internet just a little bit more awesome uh and and personal and not rely too heavily on the LLMs. Um cuz well, it's not about relying on them. It's just like I don't know. I don't know. Thanks for watching. Anyway, a big thank you to my enabler of awesome Johnny and all my other patrons and channel members uh for their continued support. And of course, until next time, is more important than ever. Continue making your corner of the internet a little bit more awesome. I said that part already. Uh again, I'm a little bit flustered honestly by this and I don't know how to end this. So, I guess that's it.