Use without preset style?

[DexterHill0]

I want to use shadcn because it will provide me with a lot of the ground work in terms of wrapping all radix primitives, giving them the right slots, prop types, general layout styles, and so on. However, the preset styles, and even custom tailwind theme variables, do not provide me with enough customisation for my use case as I need to follow fairly strict design rules.
Reading the shadcn source, I can clearly see the radix primitives are mostly just given class names like cn-* and the preset styles are simply css files that define tailwind classes for all those class names (such as registry/styles/style-lyra.css).

Is there any way for me to write my own one of these css files? I can't seem to find a way, in the CLI, to generate components with the raw cn-* class names, so I'm assuming not, but it would be extremely nice if I could.

[SagarFieldElevate]

Yes, you can use shadcn components without the preset styles. The approach is:

1. Add components normally via npx shadcn@latest add button (or whatever component you need)
2. Skip the preset style during init or remove the imported style CSS file from your project
3. Write your own CSS targeting the cn-* class names that the components use

The components output markup with class names like cn-button, cn-card, etc. The preset style files (e.g., registry/styles/style-lyra.css) are just Tailwind utility mappings for those class names. You can create your own CSS file that maps those same cn-* classes to whatever Tailwind utilities or custom CSS you want.

For example, create your own my-style.css:

.cn-button {
  @apply your-custom-classes-here;
}

Alternatively, if you want even more control, you can eject/copy the component source files (they live in your project after add) and modify the class names directly. Since shadcn copies the source into your project, you own the code and can customize everything.