Exceeded maximum recursion depth while resolving `tailwindcss/utilities`

[m1guer]

What version of Tailwind CSS are you using?

    "tailwindcss": "^4.2.1",

What build tool (or framework if it abstracts the build tool) are you using?

For example: postcss-cli 11.0.0, Next.js 15.1.7, Vite 6.1.0

    "next": "16.1.6",
    "@tailwindcss/postcss": "^4.2.1",

What version of Node.js are you using?

v24.14.0

What browser are you using?

Chrome

What operating system are you using?

Ubuntu

Describe your issue

i'm just trying to render a simple nextjs project page from the bun create next-app and it crashes:

## Error Type
Build Error

## Error Message
Error evaluating Node.js code

## Build Output
./src/app/globals.css
Error evaluating Node.js code
CssSyntaxError: tailwindcss: /home/miguer/work/pubstruct/money/src/app/globals.css:1:1: Exceeded maximum recursion depth while resolving `tailwindcss/utilities` in `/home/miguer/work/pubstruct/money/node_modules/tailwindcss`)
    [at Input.error (turbopack:///[project]/node_modules/postcss/lib/input.js:135:16)]
    [at Root.error (turbopack:///[project]/node_modules/postcss/lib/node.js:146:32)]
    [at Object.Once (/home/miguer/work/pubstruct/money/node_modules/@tailwindcss/postcss/dist/index.js:10:6913)]
    [at async LazyResult.runAsync (turbopack:///[project]/node_modules/postcss/lib/lazy-result.js:293:11)]
    [at async transform (turbopack:///[turbopack-node]/transforms/postcss.ts:70:34)]
    [at async run (turbopack:///[turbopack-node]/ipc/evaluate.ts:92:23)]

Import trace:
  Client Component Browser:
    ./src/app/globals.css [Client Component Browser]
    ./src/app/layout.tsx [Server Component]

Next.js version: 16.1.6 (Turbopack)

[RobinMalfait]

Hey! Can you share a minimal reproduction repo so we can take a look?

Your src/app/globals.css should just look like this:

@import "tailwindcss";

[m1guer]

Hey, sorry about that — I totally forgot about this one. Here's what solved it for me: I rolled back some minor versions, but the most recent ones still aren't working. Anyway, here's the reproducible:
https://github.com/m1guer/wip

[m1guer]

same repo but when i get back to the version: tailwindcss@4.1.8 works really fine!

[wongjn]

Seems to work fine for me at least, with Bun 1.3.0 in WSL2 with Ubuntu 22.04:

/tmp/test (main)
$ bun run build
$ bun run build.ts

🚀 Starting build process...

📄 Found 1 HTML file to process

┌───┬────────────────────────────┬─────────────┬───────────┐
│   │ File                       │ Type        │ Size      │
├───┼────────────────────────────┼─────────────┼───────────┤
│ 0 │ dist/chunk-xgb8xhaf.js     │ entry-point │ 183.84 KB │
│ 1 │ dist/index.html            │ entry-point │ 451.00 B  │
│ 2 │ dist/chunk-19aq78fn.css    │ asset       │ 18.55 KB  │
│ 3 │ dist/chunk-xgb8xhaf.js.map │ sourcemap   │ 808.95 KB │
│ 4 │ dist/logo-kygw735p.svg     │ asset       │ 3.85 KB   │
│ 5 │ dist/react-c5c0zhye.svg    │ asset       │ 338.00 B  │
└───┴────────────────────────────┴─────────────┴───────────┘

✅ Build completed in 103.69ms

/tmp/test (main)
$ bun --hot src/index.ts
🚀 Server running at http://localhost:3000/
Bundled page in 133ms: src/index.html

[m1guer]

The problem is not just with bun; I tried with npm as well, and I encountered the same issue.

[RobinMalfait]

I think I was able to reproduce it. Can you try and remove the node_modules folder and run pnpm install, and then try again?

I believe what happened is that you might have executed the upgrade tooling, and for some reason it upgraded the node_modules/tailwindcss/utilities.css file. That file contains @tailwind utilities; (which is correct), but if you used @tailwind utilities; in your own CSS file (because that's what you had to do in Tailwind CSS v3), it should upgrade it to be @import 'tailwindcss/utilities' layer(utilities);. But since it updated the file in node_modules, you now get an infinite import loop because:

/* node_modules/tailwindcss/utilities.css */
@import "tailwindcss/utilities" layer(utilities);

References itself.

Going to keep this open, to make sure we have a proper fix and never migrate these files in node_modules...

[m1guer]

Screencast.from.2026-03-11.13-41-49.webm

node -v
v24.14.0

[m1guer]

If you'd like, I can give you access to my PC and configs to see if there's anything that might be causing this bug.

[m1guer]

Also when i get back to tailwind 4.1.X it works fine

[RobinMalfait]

Once you run bun install, can you look in node_modules and see what's inside the node_modules/tailwindcss/utilities.css file. I would expect @tailwind utilities, but I think you will have @import "tailwindcss/utilities" layer(utilities); instead.

I have a feeling that the tailwindcss folder in node_modules is either symlinked, or its installing dependencies from some cache and that cache might have been corrupted with the wrong contents.

You can probably also look in the ~/.bun/install/cache/tailwindcss@4.2.1@@@1 folder (the actual paths my vary, but it's dependency@version@@@<some-number>) and see if the corrupted file is in there as well. If that contains the corrupted file, then re-installing doesn't help because it pulls dependencies from these folders.

When I manually make the files corrupt in that folder, then even with bun install --no-cache --force it still pulls dependencies from those caches, so we have to go a bit nuclear here I'm afraid.

So what I would recommend is to remove all Tailwind CSS related caches:

rm -rf ~/.bun/intall/cache/tailwindcss*

Please double check your paths before you run these commands!

Then remove the node_modules in your project, and run bun install again. That should hopefully fix it.

[m1guer]

Fixed! thanks.

[khalidsaidi]

A2ABench has an accepted answer for this imported thread.

• Thread: https://a2abench-api.web.app/q/cmmlg235500d6uexh66z6xzoo
• Accepted at: 2026-03-25T19:21:27.430Z
• Accepted answer agent: ai village
• Answer preview: "No matching threads were found for this query."