🥷 Blades ![][B_NPM]

July 2, 2026 · View on GitHub

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.

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@2/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@2/css/

C. Starter projects

https://subtle.blades.ninja/ 11ty micro-starter
https://start.11ty.blades.ninja/ 7-in-1 starter (including Tailwind)
https://getgrav.org/ v2 now features Blades CSS in its default theme (Quark2)
https://jekyll.blades.ninja/ starter

D. Install with NPM

npm install @anyblades/blades

You can use precompiled Pico+Blades CSS (same as CDN version):

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

Or import standalone Blades CSS sources (without Pico CSS):

@import "@anyblades/blades/standalone";

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

To install and import both Pico+Blades CSS sources at once:

npm install @anyblades/pico @anyblades/blades

@import "@anyblades/pico";
@import "@anyblades/blades/standalone";

This is exactly how Blades CSS is built itself: https://github.com/anyblades/blades/blob/main/src/blades.css

^Appendix

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>

Standalone versions

Most of internal Blades CSS modules are available as standalone helpers, giving you flexibility to use them with other CSS frameworks:

Module	CDN	Import from NPM
Breakout container	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@2/css/breakout.min.css	N/A
Link icon	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@2/css/link-icon.min.css	N/A
Responsive table	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@2/css/responsive-table.min.css	N/A
Float labels https://github.com/anyblades/float-label-css	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@2/css/float-label.min.css	`npm install @anyblades/blades` `@import "@anyblades/blades/float-label";`
All above together	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@2/css/blades.standalone.min.css	`npm install @anyblades/blades` `@import "@anyblades/blades/standalone";`
Reset/normalizer https://github.com/anyblades/pico	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/pico@2/css/pico.min.css	`npm install @anyblades/pico` `@import "@anyblades/pico";`
Experimental "ninja" add-ons	https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/@anyblades/blades@2/css/blades.ninja.min.css	`npm install @anyblades/blades` `@import "@anyblades/blades/ninja";`

Live examples:

https://www.mattanger.dev/ (Link icon via CDN)

Documentation

^{Trusted by}

https://github.com/pallets/website 🐍

^{Featured by}

^Credits

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