Astro Weekly #79

Astro 5.7 lands with fresh APIs, new Agency Partner Program launches, live editing and instant deploys

Author

Nathan Lawson
April 20, 2025

Hello, Astronauts!

Astro Launch Week touched down with a basket of new features, fresh APIs, and a major move toward professionalizing the Astro ecosystem.

Plus, the community’s been busy shipping tools and tutorials, from live editing with CloudCannon to zero-setup deployments with Bolt.

Let’s get into it. 🚀

What’s new with Astro 🗞️

A serif-ously good update

Astro 5.7 spring-loaded with fresh features 🌱

Astro 5.7 is here, and it’s packed with several new APIs and features to boost your workflow and make dev life a little sweeter. No egg hunt required.

Here’s what’s new in Astro 5.7:

  • 🧪 Experimental Fonts API: Load custom fonts from Google, Fontsource, Bunny, or local files with a single config. Includes smart defaults, preloading, and fallback generation.

  • 🔐 Sessions API: Store user data server-side with full type safety and adapter support for Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare, and more. Great for carts, form state, and personalized content.

  • 🖼️ SVG as Components: Import .svg files just like .astro components. Get inline SVGs with prop support (width, height, fill, etc.) without any extra tooling.

  • ⚙️ Config Imports: Use astro:config to access base paths, trailing slash settings, and more, with full type safety and support for both client and server.

To upgrade, run npx @astrojs/upgrade, or check out the Astro 5.7 release post for the full details.

Connecting devs and clients

Astro unveils Agency Partner Program and more 🧑‍🚀

Astro Launch Week brought more than just a version bump.

The new Astro Agency Program connects top-tier Astro developers with clients looking for expert help, while also supporting the continued growth of the Astro open source project.

Also landing this week: Starlight 0.34, with improved navigation and Tailwind v4 support, plus the announcement of Astro’s 2025 Technical Steering Committee to help guide the project’s future.

Astro Boosters 🚀

Learn Astro includes over 17 hours of content

A premium course for building modern websites using Astro 👨‍🏫

Learn Astro guides you to understand and use the fundamentals of Astro—from basic components to API Routes, middleware, auth, images, db, and more.

The course includes more than 175 lessons and 17 hours of content and finishes with three projects (CMS, CRUD, and a full-stack E-Commerce app).

Astro Weekly subscribers get 20% off—just click the link below to claim your discount!

Astro Community 🧑‍🚀

Fire the CloudCannon

Real-time visual editing with CloudCannon + Bookshop ✏️

Tom Richardson guides you through integrating Bookshop with CloudCannon for real-time visual editing in your Astro site.

The result? A fully visual, component-based editing experience with no rebuilds, just instant previews and smooth content updates.

Deploy an Astro project with Bolt ⚡

Looking for the fastest way to get an Astro site live? Benny’s Guides shows how to use Bolt.new, a browser-based tool where you can prompt, run, edit & deploy apps.

Perfect for quick experiments or sharing ideas, Bolt lets you skip the setup and go straight from code to deployed Astro site in minutes.

What else caught my interest this week 🤓

Check out these great posts from the Astro Community ↓

If you have something awesome you’d like to share with the Astro community, you can reach me at [email protected] or via DM on X

Blazing-fast Astro themes ⚡

Light as a feather, fast as lightning

Meet Feather—an elegant, minimalist blog theme for Astro. 🪶

Feather provides a clean, typography-focused design that puts your writing first while achieving perfect Lighthouse scores across all metrics.

Early access pricing available for a limited time.

Astro on X 💫

What’s happening on Twitter X this week…

Astro Showcase 🤩

Check out these impressive projects built with Astro!

Fingerpaint Group

We are Fingerpaint Group, a vibrant palette of people and expertise spanning the full spectrum of life sciences solutions.

fingerpaint.com

Mimekitchen

Mimekitchen offers the best kitchen appliances for your home. From blenders to toasters, we have everything you need to make your kitchen complete.

mimekitchen.com

That’s everything for this week! 🚀

If you’re building something cool with Astro, I’d love to see it. Drop me a line at [email protected] or slide into my DMs on X.

Whatever’s on the launchpad next, you can count on Astro Weekly to bring it your way.

Catch you soon, Astronauts!

– Nathan 👨‍🚀