Astro Scholar 2.1.0 is ready - Astro Scholar

Astro Scholar 2.1.0 turns the site behind my portfolio into a reusable open-source theme for academic profiles, research blogs, projects, and publications. What began as a personal site is now a starter that other researchers can install, understand, and make their own.1 Plain Markdown is easy to search, version, migrate, and reuse outside this theme.

A light and dark research workspace with connected publication, code, chart, and writing cards.

Start from the theme

Create a new site with pnpm create astro@latest --template mychiffonn/astro-scholar, then follow the repository documentation

What ships in 2.1

The release brings the portfolio and the writing system together instead of treating the blog as an afterthought:

Surface	What it is designed to show
Profile and timeline	Research interests, experience, teaching, and updates
Projects	Methods, artifacts, collaborators, code, and outcomes
Publications	BibTeX-backed papers with abstracts and resource links
Research blog	Long-form arguments, working notes, and connected ideas
Uses page	The tools and practices behind the work

The interface uses native CSS, very little client-side JavaScript, typed content collections, and a responsive light/dark theme. Publications, projects, tags, stages, RSS, sitemap, social images, and author profiles are included.

Reusable installation and customization guides
Desktop previews for the Astro theme directory
Light and dark blog previews
Automated formatting, linting, Markdown tests, type checks, and builds
Your own research and writing

Technical writing stays readable

Research writing moves between prose, evidence, equations, code, and qualifications. Astro Scholar keeps those forms in ordinary Markdown instead of requiring a custom component for each one.

For example, Bayes’ rule can sit inline, $p (θ | D) \propto p (D | θ) p (θ)$ , or expand into a display:

p (θ | D) = \frac{p (D | θ) p (θ)}{\int p (D | θ) p (θ) d θ}

The configured Sätteri pipeline renders the expression as semantic MathML with Temml. It also supports syntax-highlighted code:

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const release = {
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  version: "2.1.0",
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  output: "static",
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  writing: ["math", "figures", "code", "sidenotes", "wikilinks"],
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} as const

A research site should make the path from question to evidence easy to inspect—not bury it beneath the machinery of the site.

A connected research record

Wikilinks connect the release to project notes, formal publications, and short updates. Ordinary Markdown links work alongside them, so the source remains portable.

Tip

Callouts can begin collapsed when implementation detail should remain available without interrupting the main argument.

Before upgrading an existing site

Review your local configuration and content changes before copying release files. Run the full validation suite after updating dependencies.

Footnotes become margin sidenotes on wide screens and compact disclosures on narrow ones.2 Sidenotes keep citations and qualifications near the claim they support while preserving an accessible reading order. Figures remain local to the post, with descriptive alt text and Astro image optimization.

Built for continued maintenance

Version 2.1 also tightens the less visible parts of the theme: the Astro-native installation path, current integration guidance, agent-facing project context, Markdown plugin tests, and small architecture checks that protect shared CSS patterns.

The result is not a frozen personal-site export. It is a foundation intended to be forked, adapted, and kept current—whether the next entry is a paper summary, a tutorial, a lab note, or a reflection that begins with a ~~perfect result~~ better question.

Plain Markdown is easy to search, version, migrate, and reuse outside this theme.
Sidenotes keep citations and qualifications near the claim they support while preserving an accessible reading order.