• Super-clean, minimal markdown editor inspired by iA Writer, supporting markdown and MDX files. Hides YAML frontmatter and component imports so you can focus on your writing.
• User-friendly frontmatter panel based on the file's frontmatter and the collection schema, including validation and a specific UI for common fields like title and description (configurable).
• In MDX files, Cmd + / opens a palette to quickly insert Astro components intended for use in MDX files (e.g., <Callout>). Props can be selected and tabbed through after insertion. Available components and their props are read from your Astro project. Defaults, slots, and required props are respected.
• File List sidebar ordered by pubDate field (not filename), with drafts clearly marked (configurable).
• Dragging images/files into the editor copies them to your Astro assets folder (with a web-safe filename) and inserts the correct markdown tag.
• Focus and typewriter mode à la iA Writer.
• Command palette for quick access to all commands, including Open Project/Collection/Current File in your configured IDE.
• Duplicate, rename, and create new files easily.
• Keyboard shortcuts for inline markdown formatting, toggling headings, etc. Pasting URLs over selected text inserts a link tag. Holding option makes URLs clickable. Multiple cursors à la VSCode.
• Autosave & crash recovery.

• Supported Astro Versions: > 5.x
• Supported Content Collections: Astro 4+ content collections defined in content.config.ts using the glob loader. Non-.md/.mdx files in these collections will be ignored.

By default, Astro Editor expects the following structure in your Astro project:

my-astro-site
└── src
    ├── assets
    │   └── mycollection
    │       └── image1.png
    ├── components
    │   └── mdx
    │       └── ExampleAstroComponent.astro
    ├── content
    │   └── mycollection
    │       └── blog-post.mdx
    └── content.config.ts

The paths to the Assets, Content, and MDX Components directories (relative to the project root) are configurable per project, but their internal structures are not.

Download the latest Release

See User Guide

This is a work in progress so it's probably best to commit regularly in your Astro project if you're writing a lot of stuff in Astro Editor.

Please file an issue if you experience:

• Problems handling your Astro schema, frontmatter, or directory structure
• Problems reading or writing your Markdown/MDX files – especially if it caused corruption or data loss in your Astro site
• Problems handling your "MDX" Astro components
• Changes to how Astro works which have broken something
• Crashes or bugs
• Confusing or unexpected UI behavior or UX
• Debilitating performance issues

Feature requests are always welcome.

1️⃣ This project is designed to provide a pleasant user experience when authoring or editing markdown & MDX files in the content collections of local Astro sites. It's for when you're in "writer mode", not "coder mode". Everything else about managing an Astro site should happen when you're in "coder mode", and therefore in your text editor & terminal. Anything to do with git, publishing, deploying, or code is explicitly out of scope and will remain so.

2️⃣ The goal of this project is simplicity when writing, so the UI/UX is intentionally opinionated. Configuration options are deliberately limited to "making it work with your Astro project and no more". I'm unlikely to accept features which add complexity to the UI or customization/extensibility.

I appreciate all feature requests which are mindful of 👆 and are written clearly enough for me to understand them.

PRs are most welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md

See the GitHub Project

• iA Writer for the inspiration and beautiful typefaces.
• DarkMatter because Vadim did this before me.

Ensure you have the Xcode command line tools, node and rust installed (see here for more)

xcode-select --install # Command line tools
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 https://sh.rustup.rs -sSf | sh # install rust
node -v # Check you have node installed

The clone the repo and run

pnpm install # Install node deps
pnpm reset:testdata # Create a local astro project for manual testing
pnpm run tauri:dev # Start the development app (which will install any missing rust dependencies)

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the developer docs.