🥷 Blades  

Minimal CSS Framework for Semantic HTML

Fully compatible and actively maintained successor to Pico CSS.

Introduces float labels, breakout container and other modern, opt-out helpers. Simply switch pico.css to blades.css OR use blades.standalone.css with other frameworks.

Get started ✨ | Standalone

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Quick start

There are 4 ways to get started:

A. Install manually

Download CSS archive and link css/blades.css in the <head> of your website.

<link rel="stylesheet" href="css/blades.css" />

B. Usage from CDN

<link rel="stylesheet" href="
  https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@3/css/blades.min.css
"/>

Live example: https://github.com/pallets/website/blob/main/src/pallets/templates/layout.html

Full list of CSS files available on CDN: https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@3/css/

pico.layered.min.css is Pico wrapped in @layer pico { }, so any unlayered styles of yours win over it without specificity fights. Note that inside a layer Pico's own !important declarations (form validation, reduced motion) beat your unlayered !important, and your @keyframes of the same name as Pico's win regardless of load order. When you can use @import, @import url("…/pico.min.css") layer(pico); does the same without this file.

C. Install with NPM

npm install @anyblades/blades

Then, @import sources into your CSS file:

@import "@anyblades/blades";

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Alternatively, import standalone Blades CSS sources only (without underlying Pico CSS base styles):

@import "@anyblades/blades/standalone";

Live example using Tailwind: https://github.com/anyblades/buildawesome-micro-starters/blob/main/tailwind/styles.css

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Or import only the Pico CSS parts you need, e.g. per page or per component:

@import "@anyblades/blades/pico/variables";
@import "@anyblades/blades/pico/layout/document";
@import "@anyblades/blades/pico/content/typography";
@import "@anyblades/blades/pico/components/modal";

• variables and layout/document are the minimum; keep the same order as src/pico/_index.css (variables → layout → content → forms → components → utilities).
• Some parts build on others, e.g. components/group and components/dropdown expect forms/basics and content/button.
• Available parts are the files under src/pico/: layout/*, content/*, forms/*, components/* (or a whole category, e.g. @anyblades/blades/pico/components) and utilities.

D. Official starters

• https://github.com/buildawesome-one/starter
• https://github.com/buildawesome-one/examples
• https://github.com/getgrav/grav-theme-quark2
• https://github.com/getgrav/grav-plugin-devtools

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Starter HTML template

<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
  <head>
    <meta charset="utf-8" />
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
    <meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark" />
    <link rel="stylesheet" href="css/blades.css" />
    <title>Hello world!</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <main class="container">
      <h1>Hello world!</h1>
    </main>
  </body>
</html>

Dynamic templates

Available for Nunjucks, Liquid and Twig ↗

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Documentation

• Get started
  • Quick start
  • Dark scheme
  • CSS variables
  • Conditional styling NEW
  • Standalone version NEW
• Layout
  • Landmarks & section
  • Container
  • Breakout container NEW
  • Grid
  • Text columns NEW
• Content
  • Typography UPD
  • Link
  • Button
  • ‹i›con helper NEW
  • List UPD
  • Table UPD
  • Responsive table NEW
  • Code blocks NEW
• Forms
  • Overview
  • Input
  • Textarea
  • Select
  • Checkboxes
  • Radios
  • Switch
  • Range
  • Float labels NEW
• Components
  • Accordion
  • Card
  • Dropdown
  • Group
  • Loading
  • Modal
  • Navigation
  • Progress
  • Tooltip
  • Timeline NEW
  • Jump to... NEW
  • Utilities NEW
• More
  • Pico CSS NEW _{(underlying fork)}
  • Ninja CSS NEW _{(experimental add-ons)}
  • Dynamic templates NEW
  • Base HTML NEW
  • Links snippet NEW
  • Sitemap XML NEW
  • CSS frameworks 2026–2040

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^{Trusted by}

• 🐍 Flask & Jinja community website
• 🪐 Grav CMS v2 default theme ↗

^{Featured by}

• getgrav.org
• @11ty/buildawesome ↗
• buildawesome.one
• https://github.com/dbohdan/classless-css
• https://github.com/uhub/awesome-css
• /gabrielizalo/awesome-css-frameworks
• https://github.com/eggplantpasta/greenroom
• /adamdjbrett/11ty-wisp ↗
• doany.io
• @draupnerdata
• @cantdutchthis
• @daviding
• @infotexture
• @lazarus
• @matthewmorete
• @pauleveritt

^Credits

• https://picocss.com/ for inspiration
• https://11ty.dev/ for site generation