Jekyll TailwindCSS Starter

Example repo to use Jekyll in a simpler way, without a theme and default liquid tags, configured with TailwindCSS.

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.x or higher
• Bundler 2.5.23+
• Jekyll ~> 4.4.1

Installation

Install Bundler and Jekyll:

gem install bundler jekyll

Clone the repo, then install dependencies:

bundle install

Development

Start the local dev server with live reload at http://localhost:4000:

bash dev.sh

To use a different port, pass it as an argument:

bash dev.sh 4001

Asset Pipeline

CSS and JavaScript are compiled automatically by _plugins/compile_assets.rb, which runs after every Jekyll build. No separate build step or watcher is needed.

Source	Tool	Output
_assets/css/tailwind.css	Tailwind CSS	_site/assets/styles.css
_assets/js/application.js	esbuild	_site/assets/js/javascript.js

Source files live in _assets/ so Jekyll watches them for changes but does not copy them verbatim to _site — only the compiled output lands there. In production, assets are minified automatically when JEKYLL_ENV=production is set.

Note: JavaScript dependencies (e.g. Stimulus) are still managed via package.json and must be installed with yarn install. Compilation itself is handled by the Ruby plugin — there are no npm build scripts.

Deployment

1. Set /_site as the output directory
2. Run the build command:

bash build.sh