Getting Started with Astro 7

Why Astro 7?

Astro 7 is a massive leap forward for the framework. With the rewrite of the .astro compiler in Rust, builds are now 15-61% faster in benchmarks. That means less time waiting and more time building.

Rust Compiler

The new Rust compiler replaces the old Go-based compiler. It’s not just faster - it also behaves more predictably:

• No more silent HTML “corrections” that move your elements around
• JSX-style strictness catches real bugs
• Whitespace handling matches React conventions

Sätteri: Markdown in Rust

Sätteri is Astro 7’s new default Markdown processor, written in Rust by core team member Erika. It’s the single biggest performance win for content-heavy sites.

Built-in features that used to require plugins:

• GFM tables, footnotes, strikethrough
• Smart punctuation
• Heading IDs (no more rehype-slug!)
• Math support
• Directives

Vite 8 with Rolldown

Vite 8 ships Rolldown, a Rust-based bundler that replaces esbuild and Rollup. It’s 10-30x faster than Rollup.

For most Astro projects, this is a drop-in upgrade with zero configuration changes.

Getting Started

pnpm create astro@latest

Then add your integrations:

pnpm astro add react mdx sitemap

That’s it. Your project is now running on Astro 7.