Tailwind does not generate style classes (even in a fresh Next.js project)

[TrawenCZ]

What version of Tailwind CSS are you using?

^4

What build tool (or framework if it abstracts the build tool) are you using?

Next.js 15.5.3 (but issues occur in other versions too)

What version of Node.js are you using?

v22.11.0

What browser are you using?

Vivaldi (Chromium)

What operating system are you using?

WSL2 Ubuntu 24.04.3 on Windows 11 (Version 10.0.26100 Build 26100)

Describe your issue

Hi,

I had an issue in one of cloned projects where Tailwind would not generate styles for the application. Initially I thought it's a project configuration issue, but then I tried to initialize fresh Next.js project with the officialy documented command (pnpm create next-app@latest my-app --yes), and the styles are missing there too. I'm only using Tailwind for Next.js (and decided it would be better to ask it here rather at Next.js).

It happens for both dev and build, when I inspect the output CSS file, Tailwind places license comment here, but doesn't include any classes used among the project (/*! tailwindcss v4.1.13 | MIT License | https://tailwindcss.com */). It looks a bit like the file scanning doesn't work, but I'm not familiar with the Tailwind internals.

I have also tried to cleanup the pnpm global store, but that didn't seem to help, or maybe I've used wrong commands, not sure:

pnpm store prune
rm -rf <store path>
pnpm cache delete

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[wongjn]

You can try running the dev or build command with DEBUG=* to get Tailwind to create a log file. This file will show the Tailwind scanning process which may be helpful in figuring out what is wrong. Otherwise, you can provide it here for us to analyze and/or a git repo in question.

[TrawenCZ]

Thanks for a quick reply. I've tried that and this is the output (I don't quite understand the real meaning behind these logs 😄):

2025-09-21T08:17:33.621046Z  INFO tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: Provided sources:
2025-09-21T08:17:33.621937Z  INFO tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: Source: PublicSourceEntry { base: "/home/trawen/code/ics/dendro/v0/dendronetworkportallangs1", pattern: "**/*", negated: false }
2025-09-21T08:17:33.621985Z  INFO tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: Optimized sources:
2025-09-21T08:17:33.621989Z  INFO tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: Source: Auto { base: "/home/trawen/code/ics/dendro/v0/dendronetworkportallangs1" }
2025-09-21T08:17:33.624891Z  INFO scan_sources: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.625760Z  INFO scan_sources: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.625790Z  INFO extract_candidates: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.625798Z  INFO extract_candidates:read_all_files: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.625802Z  INFO extract_candidates:read_all_files: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: Reading 0 file(s)
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627583Z  INFO extract_candidates:read_all_files: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627628Z  INFO extract_candidates:parse_all_blobs: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627638Z  INFO extract_candidates:parse_all_blobs:extract: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627643Z  INFO extract_candidates:parse_all_blobs:extract: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627646Z  INFO extract_candidates:parse_all_blobs: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627652Z  INFO extract_candidates: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627854Z  INFO get_files: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.627899Z  INFO get_files:scan_sources: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.628659Z  INFO get_files:scan_sources: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.628723Z  INFO get_files: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.628760Z  INFO get_globs: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.628765Z  INFO get_globs:scan_sources: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: enter
2025-09-21T08:17:33.629413Z  INFO get_globs:scan_sources: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit
2025-09-21T08:17:33.630476Z  INFO get_globs: tailwindcss_oxide::scanner: exit

The repo doesn't really matter, as I've said, it happens even in completely fresh Next.js project.

[wongjn]

It could be you have some .gitignore in a higher directory that ignores the project folder(s). Try running git init in the root of the project to create a boundary from this.

[TrawenCZ]

You are completely correct. I wouldn't think Tailwind respects .gitignore, but that was exactly the issue (had one in the /home for versioning bash setup).

Thank you so much, been struggling with this for a while.