Popular web framework Astro has released an upgraded version, known as Astro 2.0., for building performant, content-focused websites. Astro 2.0 claims to be the first major web framework to deliver complete type safety for text-to-HTML tools like Markdown and MDX. Astro can organize Markdown with built-in parsing, validation, and automatic TypeScript type generation. 

Astro also released an experimental AI assistant called HoustonAI, trained on the Astro docs. Built on GPT-3, LangChainAI, and Astro 2.0, it can do everything on Astro.

CEO Fred Schott of HTML founded Astro a year ago with $7M in seed funding to “help build a better platform for web development”. 

Key Features of Astro 2.0:

• Content Collections: The Content Collections API offers features like schema validation, SEO best practices, helpful error messages, and automatic type-safety for Markdown & MDX.
• Hybrid Rendering: Hybrid rendering allows you to mix static and dynamic content together. You can prerender certain pages for faster loading but still keep the ability to use a server. This results in better performance for popular pages and big sites. It also lets you add an API to your existing static site.
• Redesigned Error Overlays– It has improved the way errors are shown by giving it a new design. The error display now includes more information, like tips to fix the error and a button that takes you directly to the code in your editor.
• Improved Dev Server (HMR)– Astro 2.0 improves the performance and reliability of the Astro dev server, especially around Hot Module Reloading (HMR).
• Vite 4.0– Vite, a crucial tool that drives Astro’s internal build engine, is also being enhanced to Vite 4.0 in this version. 

Astro has also launched a new public roadmap to facilitate new ideas and proposals.

You can access Astro 2.0 by running on npm or start a new one from scratch.