Uhhh no... People already struggle with CSS. No one would use Tailwind if it made it even more difficult. I've used and loved Tailwind for 5 years and some without ever having any components written for me. At worst it's as difficult as CSS (centering a div is not any easier, you just write it in a different place), and in some areas like responsiveness (media queries like screen size breakpoints) the syntax is way easier to read and write.
The problem their business model was solving is first that good design is hard, and second that even if you can design something that looks good, you might not be good at implementing it in CSS. They did those things for you, and you can copy-paste it straight into your app with a single block of code thanks to Tailwind.
You're right that LLMs essentially solved this same issue in a more flexible way that most people would prefer, and it's just one feature of many.
Doesn't matter anyways wether their customers are people who search for shortcuts or people who search for "the best designs".
Their problem was and is that tailwind is used by many of the most profitable companies in the world for free.
Thats so unbelievable stupid. You have corporations paying millions for MS 365 subscriptions, confluence, and other software and basically nothing for a totally optional ui library. If the use of tailwind saves 10 engineering hours per month then it's worth it to pay a few hundred $ for a licence.
Given that their team isn't big they don't even need that many customers. Add a bit consulting for a decent hourly rate and they should be golden.
The more I think about it the more I blame the CEO for poor decisions.
A 10$ GitHub Copilot or 20$ ChatGPT/Claude subscription get you a long way.
And if the employer isn't willing to spend this little money to improve their workers productivity they're pretty dumb.
There are valid concerns like privacy and oss licences. But lack of value or gain in productivity isn't one of them.