Shadowing Practice: Has AI killed Tailwind? - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello my friend and 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 on this to make it a bit bigger for you.

Normally I don't do this type of video.

Let me know what you think of it.

Actually let me find the original comment.

It's on the tab over here.

Right here.

Let's go in.

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 Witham's response.

Thoughts.

Okay.

So he linked directly to Adam's thoughts.

I don't know at all what's happening, but this sounds like something interesting.

So let's go in before I get to what Adam said, let's go to the original post to see what this is.

So this is a, it's been closed, as we can see here.

And so it's saying,

add LLMS.txt endpoint that serves a concatenated text-only 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.

I will say LLMs do like Tailwind.

and yeah I guess it's if you're coding you want to have something that makes it easier for them to do

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

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 updated we're gonna 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.

I 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 for now.

Overall, pretty positive responses, but obviously some people are upset by it, but I am glad to see most people are supporting um

adam trying to support his company um what are disappointing response i mean this is the person who opened it

so obviously uh they would be disappointed by it this is

complementary not replacement uh paul saying as someone who has sponsored

tailwind css in the past this is a 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.

You're running a business, that's cool, but you should disclose the fact that you are monetizing this, making Tailwind Docs LLM friendly.

I don't have an opinion there because I don't know.

Object to the spirit of closing this.

It's very OSS unfriendly.

It would not meaningfully reduce traffic to the docs by humans that actually would buy the product.

Just bad vibes.

I totally get what they're saying here in terms of

I do question if it would not meaningfully reduce the amount of traffic by humans.

Not completely sold on that.

I think it would reduce the amount of traffic by humans.

But anyway, here's a friendly tip for the TOWEN team that should already know.

I will repeat anyway.

If your goal is monetizing your software, then making it is easy to use for people's workflows is power.

100%.

Uh, I, I have a general idea of how, like, I know how Killwin 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 nobody is go even made aware of the fact

that there is a paid 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 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 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 in Tailwind, right?

That's just what it does.

So does that, I'm curious if that makes more people use Tailwind,

learn about Tailwind, and then become potential monetization candidates or no?

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 stigmatic 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 lead up there.

Let's see what the highlighted point here was.

So Adam said, I totally see the value in the feature 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.

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I did not know that.

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Holy cow.

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Okay.

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Wow.

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uh okay so 75 of people lost their jobs here yesterday yesterday no

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so when he replied the other one i think this is from three days ago from

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when i'm reporting this uh and i think

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his other one was oh that was uh

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that was also three days ago okay

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but still like i thought it was the actual day um

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but i get also the tourist response they're like obviously things are not going fantastic right now um

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so 75 people lost their jobs yesterday

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because of the brutal impact ai has had on our business

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and every second i spend trying to do fun free things

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for the community like this is the second i'm not spending trying to turn the business around

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and make sure the people who are still here are getting their paychecks every month i mean

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that is crazy

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that they've lost they had to cut 75 of the team

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uh i feel really bad uh maybe i'm just out of the loop maybe this was more well-known

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and i'm just not in the right circles to be aware of that

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but holy cow i feel i mean i've said a lot

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of times tailwind isn't for me it's not i enjoy just writing css the way i write it uh

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but i do know it's a good resource for a lot

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of people tons of people love it tons of people rely on it uh

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and i think that there's a lot of people who are better at css now

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because than there were before uh i got i was a bootstrap user and got very, I learned a lot about CSS by using Bootstrap.

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And I know other people have had the same thing with Tailwind.

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So, you know, I would prefer people, right, just like learn CSS and use it.

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And then I see it as a tool for people that are good with CSS already.

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If you understand CSS, it can be a useful tool in the right situations.

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And my biggest break with it has always been and people relying on it that don't understand CSS.

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It's not a solution, it's just a different way to author it.

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So that's always been my big thing, but you don't wanna see a company that has contributed what they have to be suffering in that way.

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So yeah, that's wild.

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Traffic to our docs is down at 40 from early 2023

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despite tailwind being more popular than ever i am really i was i was sort of mentioning

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that ai loves tailwind so like this is kind of crazy in a way

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because i think like ai is probably partially responsible for it continuing to become more popular

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but at the same time it's having a negative effect on the company.

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That's really interesting.

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Yeah.

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The docs are the only way people find out about our commercial products.

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And without customers, we can't afford to maintain the framework.

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I really want to figure out a way to offer LLM optimized docs that don't make the situation even worse.

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Again, we literally had to lay off 75% of the team yesterday.

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It makes me happy.

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I'm basically a solo team, more or less.

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So, you know, obviously, if I need to figure things out.

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It impacts me, but I'm glad most, there's nobody relying 100% on their salary on me.

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I don't know how I wouldn't be a good business owner.

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It's my own company, but anyway, that's, yeah, firing people or laying people off, that would not be something I would ever want to do.

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But I can't prioritize it right now, unfortunately, and I'm nervous to offer them without solving

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that problem first 100 i don't see an agent's i don't

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see the agent's this is paul paul was the one mentioning

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that it was um as a sponsor you get access to an agent's file of some sort

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so i don't see the agent's md stuff we offer as

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part of the sponsorship program is anything similar to this at

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all that's just a short markdown file with a bunch of my own personal opinions

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and what i consider best practice to nudge llms into writing

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their tailwind stuff in specific way it's not the docs at all

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and i resent the accusation that i'm not disclosing my true intentions here

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or something yeah that's fair enough um this is a feature

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that uh this feature is

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that some more people can build more things faster more efficient canwin is growing faster than ever

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and had its big and is bigger than it ever has been and our revenue is down close to 80 percent.

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This is just mind-blowing.

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But again, 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.

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But then having that negative effect is crazy.

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Right now, there's no just correlation between making Tailwind easier to use and making development of the framework more sustainable.

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I need to fix that before making Tailwind easier to use.

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I need to fix that before making Tailwind easier to use benefits anyone

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because if I can't fix that this project is going to become unmaintained abandonware

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when there's no one left employed to work on it.

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I appreciate the sentiment and ingredient spirit.

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It's just more complicated than that in reality right now.

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Yeah that's yeah it's if he's seeing growth of the tool

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but lower revenue trying to get more people to use it is clearly not the solution

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because there are more people using it and revenue is dropping substantially.

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So there has to be something else done.

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This is kind...

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I didn't realize Tailwind...

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I mean, in a sense, this is a crisis for Tailwind that it's reached that point because if they can't monetize it and it does become abandonware,

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like it could become an open source project.

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Is the regular Tailwind open source?

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I guess so.

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But it's not going to be the same if they don't have some sort of way to monetize it.

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Wow, I'm curious how the ramifications of this are potentially so big.

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It's crazy the way that AI is impacting our industry in these really weird ways.

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I see it myself just in terms of like the consumption of content, types of content.

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There's also the weird thing that happened with everybody exploding during the whole COVID, the pandemic and all of that.

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Obviously, content creation on my side of things, things exploded.

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Everyone is at home watching YouTube.

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So I know a lot of creators, everybody I know just boom and then it dropped.

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But then that drop has been impacted as well by AI on top of

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that but you're also seeing that in other places

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and I think this is part of it like I think

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I really think there was this like double whammy uh happening

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in in broader senses in a lot of places um yeah

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that's crazy uh I don't know they'd probably just keep going for a while uh

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whether you could do something check out our paid product i mean

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i'm not good yeah this is i think probably gets into

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more to more arguing this let's just see here um you're blocking

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which prevents bots from calling your site

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so finding how to isn't a problem for loms you're not

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blocking the robots text i mean yeah i mean this is the idea that by not letting tailwind get to your docs,

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they're still able to act like they know how to use tailwind just through like having access to everything.

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So are they just doing it badly or not as well?

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And that's sort of, I think what is happening.

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Um, you could lose valuable traffic from LLM chat reference

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because SEO is on the brink of becoming outdated with major traffic sources now coming from LLM mentions on authority sites.

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I mean, that's always like this weird thing.

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Like how many people are actually clicking through though?

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Like it gives you an answer and it's like, here's where I got the answer.

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No, are people really clicking through on that stuff?

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Uh, and this is also the hard thing is like, I don't think SEO is dead, but like question based SEO, right?

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Like how do you do this?

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And like, this impacts me as well in a different way because I'm educating people.

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And so people aren't asking on YouTube or on Google as much.

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They're asking on, they're asking me LLM and getting answers from that.

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And so it impacts like such a wide range.

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And I knew the impact it had on the educational sector.

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I'm seeing it.

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I didn't realize it would have this type of impact on a business like Tailwind at all.

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I never would have even thought.

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It would have.

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I would have thought the inverse because there is more users that it's actually growing more.

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So this is, uh, yeah.

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Um, I don't remember what the initial question was, but I wish, I guess I just,

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I don't know what else to say about it other than like LLMs in a lot of ways.

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It for a long time now, the way I've thought about it is just like they're eating themselves, right?

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Like it becomes that the snake eating its own tail at one point, because in terms of content creation, which is my side of things,

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people are making less incentivized to make content, whether it's blog posts, videos, whatever it is, that are,

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I mean, maybe you're making other types of content.

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You're talking head things like this.

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This isn't educational.

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This is just, I don't know, it's talking head.

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But like my educational stuff, the blog posts especially, like they've been ravaged.

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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

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that content to train on anymore

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and it seems to be this is impacting other businesses in other ways

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that I'd never considered because it's not something

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that has been directly impacted to me so like

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but obviously I knew there was bigger impacts as well like just based on job markets

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and everything else um

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so yeah I don't know what the solution is I wish

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I did I'd like to know people's opinions on this down in the comments below

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so yeah i've just been like sitting here for like 10 seconds

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that i edited out like blankly staring off trying to figure

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out how to end this video in a not depressing way

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and i don't know how to do

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that uh other than just to say like i guess this is all the more reason to try

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and make our own corners of the internet just a little bit more awesome uh

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and and personal and not rely too heavily on the llms um

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because why it's not about relying on them it's just like i don't know I don't know.

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Thanks for watching.

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Anyway, a big thank you to my enabler of awesome Johnny and all my other patrons and channel members

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for their continued support.

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And of course, until next time, is more important than ever continue making your corner of the internet a little bit more awesome.

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I said that part already.

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Again, I'm a little bit flustered, honestly, by this, and I don't know how I'll stand this.

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So I guess that's it.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: Has AI killed Tailwind? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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