Build And Rendering Pipeline

Astro 7 makes the same high-level build pipeline faster by replacing slower internals.

flowchart TD
    src["Project source"] --> vite["Vite 8"]
    vite --> rolldown["Rolldown bundling"]
    vite --> oxc["Oxc transforms"]
    src --> compiler["Rust .astro compiler"]
    src --> markdown["Sätteri Markdown and MDX"]
    rolldown --> bundled["Bundled render code"]
    compiler --> bundled
    markdown --> bundled
    bundled --> queued["Queued rendering"]
    queued --> output["HTML, assets, SSR server output"]

What Changed

Layer	Astro 7 Change	Why It Matters
Vite	Upgraded to Vite 8	Uses Rolldown/Oxc-based tooling and changes some advanced Vite behavior
`.astro` compiler	Rust compiler is default and only compiler	Faster, stricter, no silent HTML correction
Markdown/MDX	Sätteri is default	Faster for Markdown-heavy sites, plugin API differs from unified
Rendering	queued rendering is stable/default	Faster rendering loop and lower memory pressure in some cases
Logging	logger API is stable	Structured logs are easier for production and agents

What This Means For You

For normal app work, you do not need to configure the pipeline. You do need to test assumptions that the old pipeline tolerated:

invalid .astro markup
exact CSS output snapshots
Markdown plugin output
advanced Vite config
whitespace between inline elements

Source-Grounded Facts

The local Astro package confirms:

Fact	Local source
Version	`astro@7.0.2` in `packages/astro/package.json`
Vite dependency	`vite: ^8.0.13`
Node requirement	`node: >=22.12.0`
Rust compiler dependency	`@astrojs/compiler-rs`
Markdown dependency	`@astrojs/markdown-satteri`

Gotcha: Vite 8 itself supports Node 20.19+ or 22.12+, but Astro 7’s package requires Node 22.12+. Use Astro’s requirement for Astro projects.