Maybe if you use a CDN, so hopefully the user might have a local cache of it from somewhere else, that can be avoided?
Still though, tailwind is pitched WITH it's build step normally, making the author's point about avoiding a build step a bit odd.
Browsers partition caches by origin now for privacy reasons, so this is no longer possible. If the user doesn’t have it cached from your website, they don’t have it cached.
Tailwind requires a build step and shipping the 1.x development build was explicitly not meant for production.
Trying to use tw 1 like this without a build step, you can't even define a custom color scheme.
If this is what you want, I'd use a library that actually supports this. Maybe tachyons? But tbh, without the build step I'd consider using Tailwind at all a massive mistake. Then I'd prefer handwritten CSS.
Custom properties should make sth like this a lot more viable though. I'm sure there are libraries that better fit this use case, if you want to use a CSS library.
Regarding the CSS size, my experience was the opposite, Tailwind output was usually a lot smaller than hand-written CSS.
I have nothing against plain CSS either though; but it's at least as easy to make a mess.