@sanity/vanilla-extract-vite-plugin

A Vite 8 plugin for vanilla-extract applications: it compiles .css.ts modules and feeds their CSS into Vite's own CSS pipeline (PostCSS, code-splitting, HMR, SSR) as virtual .vanilla.css modules — a rolldown-era alternative to @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin:

• Plugin hook filters on transform/resolveId/load (vanilla-extract#1641), so rolldown-based Vite 8 skips the Rust ↔ JS roundtrip for every module that isn't vanilla-extract related — the main source of the PLUGIN_TIMINGS build warnings with the upstream plugin.
• A caching compiler on Vite's Environment API / ModuleRunner instead of the legacy vite-node: .css.ts modules are evaluated through an internal Vite server and cached in its module graph, so rebuilds and HMR only re-evaluate what changed.
• The environment-aware hotUpdate hook instead of the deprecated handleHotUpdate.

Head-to-head numbers against @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin — vite build across minify/target variants, dev HMR, and a hook-filter stress sweep — live in the vanilla-extract benchmarks.

For libraries that ship a single pre-extracted CSS file, use @sanity/vanilla-extract-rolldown-plugin (raw rolldown) or @sanity/vanilla-extract-tsdown-plugin (tsdown) instead — this plugin is for application dev servers and app builds.

Usage

pnpm add --save-dev @sanity/vanilla-extract-vite-plugin @vanilla-extract/css

// vite.config.ts
import {vanillaExtractPlugin} from '@sanity/vanilla-extract-vite-plugin'
import {defineConfig} from 'vite'

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [vanillaExtractPlugin()],
})

Requires Vite 8. For older Vite versions, use @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin.

Options

vanillaExtractPlugin({
  /**
   * Formatting of identifiers (class names, keyframes, CSS vars, etc).
   * @defaultValue 'short' when `mode` is 'production', 'debug' otherwise
   */
  identifiers: 'short',
  /**
   * Which of your Vite plugins are re-instantiated inside the compiler server that evaluates
   * the `.css.ts` modules. By default no plugins are forwarded (and the filtering work is
   * skipped entirely) - most plugins don't affect `.css.ts` evaluation, and forwarding them
   * would run every transform twice. Vite's own options (like `resolve.tsconfigPaths`) still
   * apply to the compiler server through the forwarded config.
   */
  pluginFilter: ({name, mode}) => name === 'my-css-ts-affecting-plugin',
  /**
   * How the extracted CSS reaches the page during development. 'emitCss' (the default) serves
   * it through Vite's CSS pipeline; 'inlineCssInDev' additionally inlines all extracted CSS
   * into a <style> tag in the served HTML, preventing a flash of unstyled content in dev SSR
   * setups. Builds behave the same in both modes.
   * @defaultValue 'emitCss'
   */
  mode: 'emitCss',
})

tsconfig paths

Unlike @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin, this plugin does not forward the vite-tsconfig-paths plugin into its compiler server by default. On Vite 8, tsconfig path resolution is a built-in feature — prefer enabling resolve.tsconfigPaths in your vite.config.ts, which applies to the compiler server automatically (Vite options are forwarded as-is, only plugins are filtered):

// vite.config.ts
export default defineConfig({
  resolve: {tsconfigPaths: true},
  plugins: [vanillaExtractPlugin()],
})

If you need the vite-tsconfig-paths plugin regardless (e.g. for options the built-in doesn't cover), forward it explicitly with a pluginFilter:

vanillaExtractPlugin({
  pluginFilter: ({name}) => name === 'vite-tsconfig-paths',
})

Acknowledgements

The plugin is a port of @vanilla-extract/vite-plugin and its compiler is a port of @vanilla-extract/compiler onto Vite's Environment API (both MIT licensed, Copyright (c) 2021 SEEK). The full combined license notices are in this package's LICENSE file.