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Performance Open Source #Astro #Core Web Vitals

Why I Built This

By Adastro Team • • Updated Feb 27, 2026
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Adastro john
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I’ve been building websites for about 25 years.

I started with static HTML and Dreamweaver. Then Mambo/Joomla. Eventually WordPress.

But I’m not a formally trained software engineer. My last “deep dive” into a programming language was object-oriented PHP — many years ago.

Today I mostly work in systems and infrastructure. So this project started as a learning challenge.

I was frustrated with WordPress performance and complexity. At the same time, I wanted to understand modern stacks:

  • React
  • Astro
  • Supabase
  • Vercel / Netlify workflows
  • CI/CD pipelines
  • Server-first rendering

So I asked myself:

Could I build my own CMS from scratch — properly — using modern tools and AI-assisted development?

AdAstro is the result of that experiment.

Some numbers:

  • 2 months of spare time maxxing
  • 220 commits
  • gazillions of tokens, mostly Codex
  • ~70k lines of application code (excluding JSON), ~14k lines of tests.
  • 49 API routes, 19 admin screens, 3 modular bundled features.

It’s not perfect. It’s not a “WordPress killer.”

It’s a serious attempt to understand what modern web architecture feels like nowadays.