Shepherd
Airbnb-style website UI


- Tailwind CSS v4
Shepherd Theme Hands-On: Build Property SaaS in Rails
What Is the Shepherd Theme?
Shepherd is an Airbnb-inspired property-management and tenant-communication theme built with Tailwind CSS, Stimulus JS, and Ruby on Rails, designed to live directly inside your Rails app without copy-pasting external snippets . It ships as part of RailsUI’s swappable theme lineup, alongside Hound and others, and is completely free to try .
Features ✨
50 + reusable Tailwind-styled components (buttons, tables, modals, etc.)
20 + pre-designed page views covering dashboards, marketing, and auth flows
Dark-mode support across every component and email template
Built for Rails 7/8 with Hotwire & Stimulus interactivity baked in
Tailwind v4 ready as of RailsUI v3.1.0
Fully responsive layouts tested on common break-points
Included Components 📒
Accordion • Alert • Badge • Breadcrumb • Button • Card • Datalist • Dropdown • Flash • Modal • Pagination • Tabs • Toast • Tooltip—and 30 + more, all accessible in /app/views/rui
after install.
Pros and Cons
Pros ✅
Rapid MVPs: replaces weeks of UI work with plug-and-play templates
Rails-first: nothing to wire up; runs with
rails railsui:install
Themeable: swap color palettes or entire layouts in seconds
Active project: frequent updates & 430 + GitHub stars
Cons ⚠️
Premium licence required for some advanced layouts
Opinionated Tailwind styling may clash with existing Bootstrap UI
Documentation for Importmaps installs still thin
Limited to Rails—developers on Phoenix/Laravel must look elsewhere
Integration
Add the gem and run
rails railsui:install
to pick ShepherdWorks with cssbundling-rails / jsbundling-rails (esbuild, bun, rollup, webpack) out of the box
Stimulus controllers included for dropdowns, tooltips, and wizards
Compatible with Tailwind presets if you already have a design system
FAQ
Is Shepherd open-source?
Yes—the core theme is MIT; paid licence unlocks extras.
Does Shepherd support Turbo/Hotwire?
Absolutely—Stimulus controllers and Turbo-ready views are included.
Can I replace Shepherd’s colors?
Yes—brand palettes live in config/initializers/railsui.rb.
Which Rails versions work?
Officially Rails 7 & 8; older versions need manual tweaks.