Specificity has always been CSS's sharpest edge. You write a clean selector, then a third-party library overrides it with a more specific one. You escalate with !important. They escalate back. Cascade layers break this cycle by letting you define an explicit priority order between groups of styles.

Declaring Layer Order

A single @layer reset, base, components, utilities; declaration at the top of your stylesheet establishes the cascade order. Styles in later layers always beat styles in earlier layers, regardless of specificity. Your utility classes will always win over component styles, without needing a single !important.