TAILWIND CSS in serious apps — what I found after asking AI, using v0, and digging through GitHub

The author, lacking production experience, investigated how Tailwind CSS is used in serious apps by consulting AI, v0, and real GitHub repos. While AI and v0 generated massive CSS files with extensive tokens and variables, most highly-starred GitHub repos used minimal Tailwind setup — just the three base directives with utility classes applied directly in components. The author asks experienced developers whether this minimal, utility-first approach is truly the production standard.