I agree with Tailwind's stance on this. You really don't need @apply if you're breaking things down to smaller components. I often see people have things like <ul><li className="long_list_of_classes">text1</li><li className="long_list_of_classes">text2</li>...</ul>. This is where I think we need a linter to warn against things like that. Make those <li>'s a component!