reactjs-vite-tailwindcss-boilerplate: a Vite and React 18 starting point

One degit command, then a normal pnpm project

The whole point of a boilerplate is that the first ten minutes of a project are already done, and this one does it in three commands. You create the project with degit, which copies the template without the git history of the source repository:

pnpm dlx degit joaopaulomoraes/reactjs-vite-tailwindcss-boilerplate my-app

Then you move into the directory and install the dependencies:

cd my-app

pnpm install

And the dev server comes up with hot reload at http://localhost:5173:

pnpm run dev

Using degit rather than a git clone is a small decision with a real consequence. A clone brings the template's commits, its branches and its remote with it, and a degit copy brings the files and nothing else, which is what you want when the template's history is not your project's history. The package manager is pnpm, pinned through a pnpm-lock.yaml in the repository, and the manifest declares the package private with the type field set to module, so the project starts out as an ES module package rather than a CommonJS one.

The tool list is the feature list

The README is blunt about scope. This is a boilerplate build with Vite, React 18, TypeScript, Vitest, Testing Library, TailwindCSS 3, Eslint and Prettier, and the What is inside section lists the same set with links: Vite, ReactJS, TypeScript, Vitest, Testing Library, Tailwindcss, Eslint and Prettier. There is no router, no state library, no data-fetching layer, no component library and no storybook. The dependency list in the manifest confirms it, since the only runtime dependencies are react and react-dom at 18.3.1, and everything else is a dev dependency. What you are adopting is a set of configuration files: a Vite config at vite.config.ts, a Tailwind config at tailwind.config.mjs with autoprefixer and postcss behind it, a tsconfig.json, an .eslintrc, a .prettierrc and an .editorconfig, plus a Vitest configuration in a .vitest directory and an .vscode directory for editor settings. For a small React application that is genuinely all you need before writing code, and for a larger one it is a starting point you will extend.

The scripts tell you what the project expects of you

Six scripts define the workflow, and the flags on two of them say something about the author's intent. The dev script runs vite, build runs tsc followed by vite build, serve runs vite preview, test runs vitest and test:ui runs vitest with the interface. The two worth reading closely are lint and typecheck:

pnpm run lint

pnpm run typecheck

The lint script is eslint src --max-warnings=0, which means a warning fails the command rather than passing quietly. The typecheck script is tsc --project tsconfig.json --noEmit, which type-checks the project without writing output. Both are worth noting because a project that treats lint warnings as failures and runs a type check as a separate step is a project set up for continuous integration, and the fact that the build script also runs tsc means the type error blocks the production bundle as well. The .github directory in the repository root suggests where those commands are meant to be wired up, though the workflows themselves are not described in the README.

Testing on Vitest with a browser-like DOM

The test setup is the part that shows real care rather than a copy of the default Vite React template. The dependencies include @testing-library/react and @testing-library/jest-dom for the assertions and queries, happy-dom at 15.11.7 as the DOM implementation, and @vitest/ui for the browser interface. The test:ui script is what the README means by viewing and interacting with your tests via UI. There is a dedicated .vitest directory at the repository root for the configuration rather than a config file mixed in with the rest. Note what is not here: there is no jest dependency and no jest configuration, even though the repository topics list jest among its tags. The topics are a description of the project's history and aspirations rather than its current dependency set, and the runner is Vitest with the Vitest UI. If you copy a jest-specific setup snippet from elsewhere into this project it will not work, because there is no jest installed to run it.

Version pins that show the project's age

Reading the dev dependencies gives a clear picture of when the boilerplate was assembled. Vite is at 5.4.21, Tailwind CSS at 3.4.19, ESLint at 8.57.1 with the legacy .eslintrc file rather than the flat config, and the TypeScript ESLint plugin and parser at 6.21.0. React and its types are on 18.3, and the React plugin for Vite is the SWC variant, @vitejs/plugin-react-swc, which is the faster one and the one you want. TypeScript is the most current piece at 5.9.3, and the Tailwind ESLint plugin at 3.18.2 is the one that understands the utility class ordering conventions. The mixing of a legacy ESLint configuration format with a current TypeScript is the normal state of a template that was set up once and then only lightly maintained. None of this is a defect, but every one of those pins is a decision you will revisit.

Where this boilerplate is the wrong tool

The limits follow from what is not included. There is no routing, so a single-page application with several screens means adding a router and the conventions that come with it, and there is no server state layer, so data fetching is entirely yours to arrange. There is no component library, so the visual language of the project starts empty, and there is no design system scaffolding of any kind, which is the part that most teams end up rewriting anyway. The tooling choice also has a cost. ESLint 8 with the .eslintrc format is a generation behind the flat config that ESLint 9 expects, so upgrading the linter later means migrating configuration files, and Tailwind 3 predates the Tailwind 4 release, so a project that intends to move to the newer major inherits a migration. For a team that already has a house style for all of this, a boilerplate is overhead, because adopting one means undoing its decisions.

Licence, hosting and the shape of the repository

The project is licensed under the MIT License, stated in the README and matched by a LICENSE file at the root, and the manifest carries the same declaration. The homepage is reactjs-vite-tailwindcss-boilerplate.vercel.app, so the deployed demo runs on Vercel, and the manifest is marked private, which is consistent with a template rather than a published package. The top-level entries describe the whole thing in one line: the editor and formatting configs, a .github directory, the pnpm lockfile, postcss.config.mjs, a public directory for static assets, the src directory, tailwind.config.mjs, tsconfig.json and vite.config.ts. There are no GitHub releases, so the template has no version history to point at, and the last push to the repository was on 2026-04-11. The manifest version is 0.1.0, which reflects that this is a starting point rather than a library with a release cadence, and for a project you copy rather than install, the version number in the manifest is not something you will ever need to upgrade.

Editorial conclusion

reactjs-vite-tailwindcss-boilerplate suits a developer or small team that wants a React and TypeScript project with testing, linting and formatting already wired together, and the degit install means you get a clean git history rather than a template repository with its own commits. It is the wrong tool for a team with an existing house setup, since the value of a boilerplate is the defaults it chooses and a team with opinions has already made those choices, and it is the wrong tool if you want a starter with routing, data fetching or state management included, because the README lists no such layer. Verify first that the pins suit you, since the manifest carries React 18.3, Vite 5, Tailwind 3, ESLint 8 and TypeScript 5.9 while the repository topics still mention jest even though the runner is Vitest, and note that the last push to the repository was on 2026-04-11.

Frequently asked questions

Official sources

1. Issues
2. joaopaulomoraes/reactjs-vite-tailwindcss-boilerplate on GitHub
3. License: MIT
4. Project website
5. README