I built two Next.js 15 + Tailwind v4 templates with zero extra dependencies — here's what I learned

Earlier this month I shipped two premium templates — a SaaS landing page and a developer portfolio. Not a startup, not a SaaS, just templates. This post is about the two constraints I built them under, why they made the code better, and a few things I learned launching as a solo dev with zero audience. Constraint 1: zero dependencies beyond next, react, and tailwind Open the package.json of most templates and you'll find 20+ packages: icon libraries, animation libraries, carousel plugins, UI kits, utility libraries. Every one of them is a version conflict waiting to happen for the buyer, and most are replaceable with a few lines of code in 2026. What I used instead: Icons → inline SVG components. An icon component is ~10 lines. You need maybe 15 icons for a landing page. Animations → plain CSS. Scroll-blur navbars, gradient glows, an animated "typing" terminal — all doable with keyframes and transitions. No framer-motion. The dashboard mockup in the hero → pure CSS. Divs, borders, gradients. It looks like a product screenshot but it's ~80 lines of JSX and weighs nothing. Result: both templates land at ~100KB first-load JS, npm install takes seconds, and there is nothing to break when Next.js 16 arrives. Constraint 2: every piece of content in ONE typed config file The thing I hated most about templates I've used: content is smeared across 30 components. Changing a headline means hunting through JSX. So both templates keep all content in a single file — lib/content.ts for the landing page, site.config.ts for the portfolio. Headlines, nav, pricing tiers, testimonials, project lists, even the lines that animate in the fake terminal. Components are pure renderers of that config's TypeScript type. Two things surprised me here: TypeScript becomes your content linter. Forget an alt text, malform a link, give a pricing tier three features when the type expects a non-empty array — the build fails. Content mistakes surface at compile time. It forces better component design. W