Show HN: Frontmatter Core – a build-time content layer for Astro
adesane Thursday, January 15, 2026Hello,
I built Frontmatter Core after repeatedly hitting the same problem: modern frontends and CMS don’t share the same model.
Astro components define structure through props. CMS expect explicit content models.
Frontmatter Core scans Astro, Markdown and YAML files and extracts a stable, typed JSON Intermediate Representation that adapters or CMS can consume.
It runs at build time only:
- no runtime
- no client-side JS
- no database
- no CMS coupling
The idea is to keep:
- layout in .astro
- content in .md / .yaml
- structure expressed once, in code, then exposed as data
Adapters (PHP, flat-file CMS, headless CMS, etc.) plug into the same IR.
GitHub: https://github.com/withfrontmatter/frontmatter-core
Happy to answer technical or architectural questions.