Knowledge Base · Infrastructure & deployment
A dark theme that never rendered: the missing Vite plugin
The symptom
The page rendered with the browser's white default. The stylesheet file existed, the theme variables were defined in the source, and no build error appeared in the terminal.
What was actually wrong
The CSS framework was installed as a dependency, but the bundler config never registered its plugin. Declarations like the custom theme block and the utility classes were therefore treated as unknown at-rules and dropped silently — no error, no output, no styling.
The fix
Register the framework's plugin in the bundler config (for example add it to the plugins array next to the framework's own plugin), reinstall the matching version, and add a small inline critical stylesheet in the HTML head so the correct background and colour scheme paint before any CSS file loads.
What we took away
A stylesheet that exists is not a stylesheet that compiled. When a theme silently disappears, check the build step before the CSS: 'no error' from the bundler means nothing if the plugin was never registered.