All 100 ideasCoding
#90 of 100 · Coding
Clean up CSS against real pages
Developers want to check CSS against their real HTML to drop unused rules, get fix tips, and convert between Tailwind classes and CSS.
Asks per year
What the askers want
- Would pay12%
- Want it local or private12%
- Object to subscriptions0%
- Want it open source or self-hosted0%
- Want AI to do it0%
Share of the 8 asks that say so, as judged by Jev.
What exists on Show HN
Tried, never finished2 Show HN launches do part of this. None does the whole job.
Instead of: Tailwind, Bootstrap
The idea, as matched
A tool that analyses CSS against a site's actual HTML pages to remove unused rules, suggest fixes, and convert between Tailwind utility classes and plain structured CSS.
Jev first matched 8 requests to this idea; a second reader kept 8 of 8.
Every ask, newest first
Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.
- Jul 2025Wants a CSS analyzer that gives optimization tips based on their stylesheet. Read it: a comment in “I tried Servo”
- Sep 2024Wants a tool that removes CSS rules not matching a set of static HTML files. Read it: a comment in “CSSnano”
- Mar 2024Would pay for a tool that turns Tailwind class soup into structured CSS. Read it: a comment in “Optimize CSS with SAT Solving”
- Nov 2022Wishes for a DOM-aware CSS linter. Read it: a comment in “Tailwind is a leaky abstraction”
- Dec 2021Wants a compiler that converts inline styles into Tailwind classes. Read it: a comment in “Tailwind CSS v3.0”
- Jan 2016Wants a tool that follows a browser session and reports unused Bootstrap CSS and jQuery parts. Read it: a comment in “The Website Obesity Crisis”
- Feb 2013Wants a tool that automatically removes unused selectors from big CSS frameworks in the build process. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: Record your CSS usage on your website - remove unwanted CSS”
- Jun 2010Wants a tool that finds unused stylesheet selectors and rules in a maturing project. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Know of a good tool that finds unused stylesheet selectors and rules?”
Building this?
Read ten of the asks above first, because they say what the existing launches miss. If you ship it, post it as a Show HN so the next run of this list finds it.
Ship it like Vercel, on a server you own
This site runs on ShipTiffin. A push to GitHub deploys it, the way it would on Vercel, but the server is a Hetzner box in your own account. Postgres, sign-in, email, jobs and analytics are already on it, every project gets a hard limit, and nothing is billed by usage.
$19 a month per box, plus about $10 for the server at Hetzner. Open source, so you can also run it yourself for free.