CSS Grid Visual Generator — drag layouts, name areas, export CSS/Tailwind/JSX/SCSS with 12 templates

Real-world use cases

• Stop hand-writing media queries for a responsive page shell

  You're building a marketing landing page with a header, hero, three-up feature grid, sidebar CTA, and footer. On desktop the layout is two-column with the sidebar pinned right; on tablet everything stacks; on mobile the sidebar disappears entirely. Pick the "hero + features" template, name your areas, switch to the tablet breakpoint and re-draw the area map as a single column, switch to mobile and set the sidebar area to `display: none`, hit export. You get one CSS block with two `@media` rules — three layout states wired up in two minutes, no copy- paste-tweak between three CSS rules.

• Convert a Figma dashboard mock into working Tailwind in one paste

  Designer hands off a Figma file with a dashboard layout: top bar, left nav, a 3x2 grid of KPI cards, and a wide chart panel spanning the bottom. Pick the dashboard template, drag the KPI cells to match the spec, rename the chart area to `chart`, switch the export to Tailwind. You get `grid grid-cols-4 grid-rows-3 gap-4` plus six `col-span-1 row-span-1` strings and one `col-span-4 row-span-1` for the chart. Paste onto your `<div className=...>` props and the dashboard is wired up. What would have been a 30-minute Tailwind docs session ships in 90 seconds.

• Generate a reusable Sass mixin for your design system

  Your design system has a "main + sidebar" layout used by 12 different pages. Build it once here (1fr 280px columns, 24px gap, named areas), switch the export to Sass mixin, you get `@mixin main-sidebar-layout { display: grid; grid-template- columns: 1fr 280px; ... }`. Drop into your `_mixins.scss`, then every page just `@include main-sidebar-layout` instead of copy-pasting the same six CSS declarations. When the spec changes (sidebar to 320px), one edit updates 12 pages.

• Sanity-check a layout before you commit to the HTML

  You're not sure if the layout should be 12-column with spans or named areas with a 3x3 grid. Toggle between the templates, look at the preview, look at the generated CSS — areas is way more readable but locks you into rectangles, 12-column is flexible but loses the named-region intent. Pick the approach that matches your design's complexity, copy the CSS + HTML export, you've got a working scaffold to drop into your component without ever opening MDN.

• Match an existing grid you saw on a competitor site

  You see a layout on Stripe / Linear / Vercel and want to recreate it. DevTools tells you `grid-template-columns: repeat(3, 1fr)` and there are three named regions. Open the tool, set columns to 3, name the cells to match, copy the output. Now you have an editable starting point — tweak the gap, add a sidebar column, change the third region's `col-span` — instead of starting from a copy-paste of the competitor's CSS that you can't easily mutate.

• Share the layout with a designer for sign-off before coding

  You think you understand the spec, but you want the designer to verify before you write the actual component. Build the layout here, copy the URL from the address bar (every input round-trips through `useUrlState`), paste in Lark / Slack / Linear. Designer opens the link, sees the same grid you built, tweaks the gap or moves an area, sends back the new URL. Two iterations and you're aligned without ever screenshotting or video-calling. Saved a 20-minute design review.

Common pitfalls

• Setting `1fr` on every column and wondering why a long URL or wide image breaks out — use `minmax(0, 1fr)` instead, the `auto` floor in default tracks is the culprit.

• Drawing a non-rectangular area (e.g. an L-shape) and getting an invalid CSS error — `grid-template-areas` requires every named region to form a rectangle, no exceptions; either split into two areas or restructure.

• Forgetting to set every cell in the area grid (leaving some as `.`) and then complaining that children land in unexpected spots — `.` is the spec-defined "empty cell" token and is required for valid `grid-template-areas`.

• Copying the Tailwind export when the layout uses `minmax(200px, 1fr)` or other arbitrary values and not noticing the `grid-cols-[200px_1fr]` arbitrary-value syntax — works fine, but if your Tailwind config doesn't enable arbitrary values you'll need to add raw CSS instead.

• Building the desktop layout, copying the CSS, and then realizing you needed the responsive variant too — use the breakpoint tabs *before* you export so the `@media` blocks come along for the ride.

• Treating `gap` and the old `grid-gap` as different — they're aliases, but `gap` is the modern name, works in Flexbox too, and is what every recent browser supports. Don't write both.

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