About astro-starlight
A skill for setting up and customizing Astro Starlight documentation sites, aimed at developers building technical, API, or multilingual documentation. It covers Starlight-specific configuration, content, and plugin patterns, including Astro 7 Content Layer integration.
Key features
- 01Filesystem or manual sidebar setup
- 02Pagefind search and DocSearch options
- 03Dark and light mode theming
- 04Documentation plugin ecosystem
- 05Multilingual and hreflang support
- 06Astro 7 Content Layer integration
Use cases
- 01Building a technical documentation site
- 02Creating API reference documentation
- 03Adding blog or versioned documentation
- 04Publishing documentation in multiple languages
Install
Copy the command and run it in a terminal.
npx skills add https:/After installing, type/astro-starlightin Claude Code to confirm it loaded.
Details
From the project READMEAlso covers multi-language documentation with hreflang support and Content Layer API integration (docsLoader, schema) specific to Starlight's content model, plus CSS custom property theming. Does not cover generic Astro Content Layer usage outside Starlight (astro-content) or non-Starlight i18n routing (astro-i18n) — those are handled by their own skills.
Astro Starlight
Production-ready documentation theme for Astro with built-in search, dark mode, i18n, and rich plugin ecosystem.
Agent Workflow (MANDATORY)
Before ANY implementation, spawn 3 agents in parallel, one Agent call each with a name:
- fuse-ai-pilot:explore-codebase - Analyze existing Starlight config, sidebar, and content structure
- fuse-ai-pilot:research-expert - Verify Starlight plugin APIs via Context7/Exa
- mcp__context7__query-docs - Check Starlight docs for Content Layer and i18n patterns
After implementation, run fuse-ai-pilot:sniper for validation.
Overview
When to Use
- Building technical documentation sites
- Creating API reference docs (with starlight-openapi)
- Generating docs from TypeScript types (with starlight-typedoc)
- Adding a blog to a documentation site (with starlight-blog)
- Setting up versioned documentation (with starlight-versions)
- Multi-language documentation with hreflang support
Why Starlight
| Feature | Benefit |
|---|---|
| Pagefind built-in | Full-text search, zero config |
| Dark/light mode | Automatic, CSS custom properties |
| Sidebar config | Filesystem-based or manual groups |
| Plugin ecosystem | DocSearch, blog, openapi, typedoc |
| Content Layer API | Astro 7 content collections integration |
| llms.txt support | starlight-llms-txt for AI discoverability |
| No-JS mobile menu (0.42) | Popover API — menu works with JS disabled; ships compiled JS + .d.ts (faster tsc) |
Reference Guide
Concepts
| Topic | Reference | When to Consult |
|---|---|---|
| Setup | setup.md | Installation, project structure |
| Sidebar | sidebar-config.md | Navigation, groups, auto-gen |
| Search | search.md | Pagefind, DocSearch, exclude pages |
| Plugins | plugins.md | Blog, openapi, typedoc, versions |
| i18n | i18n-multilang.md | Locales, translations, hreflang |
| Content Layer | content-layer.md | docsLoader, schema, collections |
| Customization | customization.md | CSS variables, components override |
Templates
| Template | When to Use |
|---|---|
| starlight-config.md | Full astro.config.mjs with Starlight |
| sidebar-example.md | Complex sidebar with groups and badges |
Best Practices
- Start with filesystem sidebar - Add manual config only when needed
- Keep Pagefind for small sites - DocSearch for high-traffic or large docs
- Use
starlight-llms-txt- AI crawlers increasingly important for docs - Content Layer schema - Type-safe frontmatter prevents runtime errors
- CSS custom properties - Override theme without component slots