I feel like this is a conflation of two very different ways to use frameworks. If you write semantic classes and use @apply in tailwind or variables in pollen,

I feel like this is a conflation of two very different ways to use frameworks. If you write semantic classes and use @apply in tailwind or variables in pollen, it boils down to pretty much the same thing. If you use tailwind utility classes in html directly you'll have what you describe, but you can still run the cleanup scripts and be done with it. The strength of either framework imho stems mostly from having a config and a subset of options, a design system, contrary to just writing vanilla css. But any mess of unused classes is always yours to keep or clean.