CSS has never been more powerful than it is today, yet it’s often the most overlooked part of a modern tech stack.

At this year’s thoughtbot Open Summit on October 31st, Elaina Natario, one of our design team leads, wants to make one thing clear: developers should care about CSS again.

Elaina will be joining our Open Source Panel, a conversation between the maintainers behind thoughtbot’s most exciting projects. During the panel, she will discuss her new open source project, Roux, a native CSS boilerplate that rethinks how teams structure and scale their styles without needing to reach for frameworks like Tailwind.

Unlocking the power of CSS

If you’ve ever kicked off a new project and immediately gotten stuck on how to set up your stylesheets, Elaina understands the feeling.

Every project starts with the same questions. Where should my files go? What should I include? What if I don’t want to use a framework like Tailwind?

After years of leading front-end implementation on client projects, Elaina decided to answer those questions in the form of open source. The result is Roux, a collection of modern CSS patterns and sensible defaults that show how far the language has come.

“CSS is so powerful now,” she says. “We don’t have to rely on JavaScript or third-party frameworks to do what CSS already handles beautifully. Roux is about using CSS as it was meant to be used.”

Continuing the legacy of Bourbon

Roux doesn’t exist in a vacuum, but builds on thoughtbot’s long history of design-focused open source.

A decade ago, our Bourbon and Bitters projects became go-to Sass toolkits for writing cleaner, DRYer front-end code. Although these projects were sunset as native CSS features matured, their spirit lives on in Roux.

“What we’re doing with Roux is basically what Bitters was doing, but with native CSS,” Elaina explains. “The platform has finally caught up. You can use custom properties instead of variables, cascade layers to organize your styles, and container queries for responsive design, all without Sass or JavaScript.”

Roux isn’t meant to hide CSS behind abstractions or make it “palatable” to JavaScript-first developers. Instead, it invites developers to open the code, understand it, and take what they need.

It’s not a black box. You don’t install it and forget it. You clone it, explore it, pull out the parts you want. It’s a starting point and a learning tool.

Elaina’s goal isn’t to replace Tailwind or rebuild Bourbon, but to remind developers that CSS itself is a living, evolving language worth mastering.

Developers should care about CSS. It’s the foundation of how people experience what we build. Roux is here to make it easier, and maybe a little more fun, to care again.

Why contributing to open source matters

When it comes to open source, Elaina firmly believes that it isn’t just about code. It’s about seeing how other people think, how they structure problems, and how small contributions can make an outsized impact.

The web is a group project.

“When you open up your work, you get new ideas, new perspectives, and better solutions. You learn from people outside your immediate team, and you give back to the tools you rely on every day.”

For individual developers, contributing to open source is one of the most effective ways to grow. It’s a chance to work with different codebases, pick up new approaches, and build a visible track record of your skills. “It’s a portfolio that’s alive,” Elaina says. “Every issue you comment on, every pull request you make, is proof of how you collaborate and solve problems.”

For teams and managers, the benefits are just as strong. Open source keeps your developers close to the heartbeat of the tools they depend on. It exposes them to fresh patterns, prevents technical stagnation, and fosters empathy for the maintainers behind the libraries that power your products.

You don’t have to just use things as they are. You can help shape them.

That’s exactly what she hopes will happen with Roux. Elaina is actively inviting developers and designers to participate by adding issues, refining documentation, or starting a conversation about CSS setup and best practices.

“Contributing doesn’t mean rewriting the whole codebase,” she says. “It could be one small improvement or even just sharing your perspective. The more voices we have, the better these tools become.”

Join us at thoughtbot Open Summit

thoughtbot Open Summit isn’t just about showcasing tools, but bringing developers, teams, and maintainers together to share ideas and discuss how we build for the web. From design systems to testing libraries to AI frameworks, every project featured at the Summit is built on the idea that we can make more progress by working in the open.

Elaina’s work on Roux is just one example of that. She hopes attendees will come to the panel with questions and ideas related to Roux and open source development more broadly.

“Open source is where innovation happens,” Elaina says. “It’s how we test ideas, learn from each other, and build tools that make the whole ecosystem stronger.”

We hope you’ll join us live at thoughtbot Open Summit on October 31st, 2025!

Register and share with your team: https://thoughtbot.com/events/open-summit