Everything tagged “astro”.https://shreyashrai.comhttps://shreyashrai.com/blog/how-this-site-workshttps://shreyashrai.com/blog/how-this-site-worksA static, Markdown-driven site built with Astro — why it exists and how publishing a new post is just adding a file.Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT<p>This site is a running log of things I learn and the projects I build. The most important property it has is that publishing is frictionless: writing a new post is exactly as much work as creating a Markdown file and pushing to git. No CMS, no dashboard, no database.</p> <h2>The stack</h2> <p>It's built with <a href="https://astro.build">Astro</a> as a fully static site. Every TIL and every post is a Markdown file with a little frontmatter block at the top — a title, a date, some tags. Astro reads those files at build time, validates the frontmatter against a schema, and turns each one into a page. The output is plain HTML and CSS with essentially no client-side JavaScript, so pages load instantly and there's nothing to break.</p> <p>There are two kinds of writing here:</p> <ul> <li><strong>TILs</strong> ("Today I Learned") — short, dated, tagged notes. This is the heart of the site and where most of the activity is.</li> <li><strong>Posts</strong> — longer writeups and essays, like this one.</li> </ul> <h2>Why no JavaScript framework</h2> <p>Because the content is the product. A personal site that's mostly text doesn't need a rendering framework shipped to the browser; it needs good typography, a readable column width, and fast loads. Keeping the build static means the whole site is a folder of HTML files that any host can serve, and there's no runtime to patch or attack.</p> <h2>Following along</h2> <p>Everything is available as a feed. There's a <a href="/rss.xml">combined feed</a> of TILs and posts, and if you only want one or the other, each has its own. Feeds carry the full text, so you can read without ever visiting the site — that's the point of them.</p> <p>If you want to see how the sausage is made, the source is on <a href="https://github.com/ItsMat78">GitHub</a>.</p> metaastrohttps://shreyashrai.com/links/astro-content-layerhttps://shreyashrai.com/links/astro-content-layerSun, 28 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT<p>The <code>glob()</code> loader plus Zod schemas are what make every TIL, post, link, and quote on this site type-checked at build — a malformed frontmatter block fails <code>astro build</code> instead of shipping a broken page. Worth a read if you run any kind of content site.</p> <p>Link: <a href="https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/content-collections/">https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/content-collections/</a></p>astrometa