🌑 Aether

The Alchemy Engine for Astro Content. Turn raw thoughts into Starlight.

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The Problem

Astro is amazing, but managing src/content can be friction-heavy. You have to deal with strict YAML Frontmatter, complex folder structures, and manual date formatting. When you have a sudden idea, you don't want to wrestle with syntax—you just want to write.

Friction kills creativity. Aether removes the syntax barrier between your brain and your blog.

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What is Aether?

Aether is a lightning-fast content generator written in Lua. It watches a folder of "raw" drafts (simple text files) and transmutes them into fully valid, type-safe Astro Content Collections (.md / .mdx).

It acts as a pre-processor for your Astro build pipeline.

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The Transformation

Input (Draft) _drafts/lua-idea.txt:

@slug: magic-of-lua
@tags: dev, minimalism
@status: draft

# Why Lua?
Because it is fast, small, and beautiful...

Output (Astro) src/content/blog/magic-of-lua.md:

---
slug: "magic-of-lua"
title: "Why Lua?"
date: 2026-02-19T10:00:00Z
tags: 
  - "dev"
  - "minimalism"
draft: true
---

Because it is fast, small, and beautiful...

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Goals

• 🎯 Zero-Friction Writing: Use a minimalist syntax (@key: value) instead of YAML.
• 🎯 Astro-First: Specifically designed to populate Astro Content Collections.
• 🎯 Blazing Fast: Written in Lua. Parses hundreds of files in milliseconds.
• 🎯 Smart Defaults: Automatically infers titles (from first H1) and dates (from file creation) if missing.
• 🎯 Dependency-Free: No heavy node_modules. Just a single Lua script.

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Who Is It For?

Audience	Use Case
Minimalists	Keep your writing folder clean, separate from code
Astro Developers	Automate the boring parts of content management
Obsidian Users	Easily adapt raw vault notes for the web

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Tech Stack

• Core Logic: Lua 5.5 / LuaJIT (for raw speed and pattern matching).
• FileSystem: LuaFileSystem (lfs) for directory traversal.
• Target: Generates Markdown/MDX compatible with Astro Content Layer.

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Usage (Concept)

1. Install Lua (if you are on Linux/Mac, you likely already have it).
2. Clone Aether into your Astro project root (or as a submodule).
3. Run the transmutation:

# In your package.json
"scripts": {
  "transmute": "lua aether/src/main.lua",
  "dev": "npm run transmute && astro dev"
}

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Roadmap

• Core Parser: Implement regex-like patterns in Lua to parse @headers.
• Smart Inference: Auto-detect Title from the first # Header.
• Draft Management: Automatically exclude files marked @draft from production builds.
• Obsidian Mode: Support [[WikiLinks]] to standard Markdown link conversion.
• Watch Mode: Re-run transmutation instantly when a draft file changes.

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Contributing

This project is currently a personal prototype ("Pet Project").

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License

MIT © 2026 - see LICENSE for details.