# twitter-archive/recess

A simple and attractive code quality tool for CSS built on top of LESS

Repository: https://github.com/twitter-archive/recess
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/recess
Homepage: http://twitter.github.com/recess
Language: CSS
License: Apache-2.0
License Family: permissive
Archived: true
Last push: 2016-04-18T11:53:32+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 10/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5251, "days_push": 3789, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, archived
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 2166, forks 195 (observed 2026-08-28T04:06:21.349538+00:00)

## What it is
RECESS is a CSS code quality tool built on top of LESS, developed at Twitter to enforce styleguide rules. It can lint CSS/LESS files for style issues and also compile or compress LESS into CSS, usable via CLI or a programmatic API.

## Use cases
- lint css files for style guide violations
- compile less to css from the command line
- enforce property ordering in stylesheets
- compress css for production builds
- watch less files and auto-compile on change

## When to choose
- maintaining a legacy codebase already using recess
- working with old LESS versions compatible with the tool

## When to avoid
- starting a new project - it is no longer maintained
- using modern LESS versions, which it does not support
- needing up-to-date CSS linting - use stylelint instead

## Facets
- artifact type: cli-tool
- maturity: abandoned
- function: linter, formatter, build-tool
- domain: web-development, frontend, developer-tools
- platform: cli, cross-platform
- tags: css, less, code-quality, stylelint-predecessor, deprecated, nodejs

## Member repositories
- twitter-archive/recess (main) score 10

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:21.349538+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T02:49:57.810735+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/twitter-archive/recess (fetched 2026-08-28T04:06:21.349538+00:00, sha d0304c8f3ea5)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.