The Astro + Sanity Stack: A Build-and-Rank Playbook

For years, “just use Webflow” was the fastest path from idea to a live, good-looking site. That’s no longer true if you’re building alongside an AI coding agent — the actual bottleneck moved from “who can wire up a CMS fastest” to “who can get the architecture right the first time.”

The build sequence that actually works

Build the static site first, with fake content. Only once the layout, routing, and SEO scaffolding are solid do you introduce the CMS.

1. Scaffold Astro with local markdown/JSON as placeholder content
2. Build every route end to end against that placeholder data
3. Model your real schema in the CMS only once you know what fields you actually used
4. Swap the data-access layer from local files to CMS queries — one file, not a rewrite

Why this order matters

Deciding your content model before you’ve built a single page means guessing. You end up with schema fields nobody reads and missing fields you discover mid-build. Building the static shell first turns schema design into a lookup exercise instead of a guess.

The one-file swap

Every page in this codebase reads content through a single module instead of calling getCollection() or a CMS client directly. When the CMS is ready, that module is the only file that changes.