The stack

Astro ships minimal JavaScript by default — HTML is rendered at build time and only the scripts that actually need the browser are sent. The view transitions client router (opens in new tab) powers in-page navigation without a heavy SPA. The content collections API drives all writing: MDX files, the /writing/ index, article URLs, and the RSS feed share one schema (Zod) so typos in frontmatter fail at build time, not in production.

Strict TypeScript throughout. Every component, page, and i18n object is typed. Catching shape mismatches at build time rather than runtime is especially useful when content schemas evolve — a missing field breaks the build, not a production page.

Articles live as MDX under src/content/writing/. The writing page, RSS (/rss.xml), and each post URL are all generated from that collection — no duplicate post lists in copy files. Frontmatter includes title, description, date, mediumUrl, and category. MDX supports astro:assets for images and small components such as pull quotes.

No CSS framework. A token system in :root covers colour, spacing, typography, and radius. Component styles are scoped with Astro's built-in style scoping. Fluid typography uses clamp() throughout — font sizes scale smoothly between breakpoints with no media queries. Animations respect prefers-reduced-motion site-wide.

Three typefaces with distinct roles: Syne for display headings, Outfit for body text, and DM Mono for labels, metadata, and inline code. Fonts are self-hosted as WOFF2 subsets in public/fonts/ with font-display: swap and preload for the primary Latin files — no third-party font request on load.

The site is fully static — Astro pre-renders every page to plain HTML at build time. No server, no runtime, no database. Deployable to any CDN or static host.

Every page has structured data (Schema.org Person, WebSite, Article where relevant), Open Graph / Twitter meta, and a generated sitemap via @astrojs/sitemap. Canonical URLs use a single site origin, and Astro is configured for trailing slashes on routes so URLs stay consistent.

Production: astro, @astrojs/mdx, @astrojs/sitemap, and @astrojs/rss. No UI framework, no animation library — the marquee, hero glow, TOC spy, and theme toggle are plain TypeScript.

Vitest covers small shared helpers. Playwright serves the production build and runs Deque axe-core against core templates in light and dark themes. GitHub Actions runs astro check, unit tests, and Playwright on pull requests and on main; failed e2e runs attach an HTML report. Local parity: npm run verify.

Tooling uses Node 22 in CI; package.json enforces engines.node >= 22.