Css cascade
Plug-and-play skills and prompts for every AI coding agent
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What its author says it does
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Manage specificity with layers, :where, and low-specificity selectors so overrides stay predictable. Use when styles fight each other, !important spreads, or you are setting selector conventions for a codebase.
SKILL.md
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CSS cascade
Every "CSS is broken" bug is the cascade working exactly as specified. Win by keeping specificity low and flat, so source order and layers decide, and by knowing the resolution order cold.
Method
- Know the order that decides. Importance, then origin, then cascade
layer, then specificity, then source order. Inline styles and
!importantinvert layer logic; astyleattribute beats any selector, and!importantin an earlier layer beats later layers. - Structure with @layer. Declare once, in order of increasing power:
@layer reset, base, components, utilities;. Anything unlayered beats all layers, so put third-party CSS into a layer (@import url(lib.css) layer(vendor)) to cap its power forever. - Keep component selectors at one class.
.card-title, not.card .header h2. Descendant chains encode DOM structure into specificity and make every future override a war. One class deep means any later rule with one class can override cleanly. - Erase specificity where you need reach.
:where(.theme-dark a)has zero specificity: perfect for defaults meant to be overridden.:is()takes the specificity of its strongest argument; use it for brevity,:where()for humility. - Reserve !important for utilities and a11y overrides. A utility like
.visually-hiddenmay claim it by design. Anywhere else it is a confession that specificity got away; refactor the competing selector instead of escalating. - Debug from the computed pane. Devtools shows the winning rule and every loser struck through, with layer attribution. Find who wins and why before writing a stronger selector; the fix is usually weakening the winner, not strengthening the loser.
Boundaries
- Inherited properties (color, font) reaching a child is inheritance, not
the cascade;
inherit/initial/revert-layerare the levers there. - Shadow DOM isolates styles by design; piercing it is a component API conversation (custom properties, parts), not a selector trick.
- Custom properties resolve at use time, not declaration time; a variable override follows the same cascade rules as any declaration.