Minrock

Minrock is a typography-first static blog theme for Astro 7, built to publish Markdown notes taken in Obsidian as an ultra-fast static site. Created by Renato Rezende under the MIT License, it renders pre-rendered HTML at build time (pure SSG) with no runtime server overhead, and positions itself around "digital sovereignty" — your content stays in open Markdown, hosted wherever you choose.

What is Minrock?

Minrock is an opinionated Astro 7 blog theme that takes Obsidian-compatible Markdown page bundles as input and produces pre-rendered static HTML, CSS, and minimal JavaScript as output. Site metadata, navigation, social links, and feature toggles live in a single file, src/config/site.ts. Content drops into src/content/blog/ with frontmatter fields for title, description, pubDate, and tags. The project is authored by Renato Rezende and released under the MIT License, with a live demo at minrock.vercel.app.

Key Features

• Pure static site generation — every page is pre-rendered at build time by Astro 7, with no runtime server component.
• Four calibrated color themes — Clean White, Warm Paper (cream), Slate Navy, and Midnight OLED black, with a header palette switcher.
• Typography-first layout — tuned vertical rhythm and type hierarchy for long-form reading; disabling the TOC auto-centers articles at a 780px max width.
• Obsidian vault friendly — drop Markdown page bundles into src/content/blog/ and copy local images alongside them.
• ScatterLeaf comments — iframe-free comments backed by GitHub Discussions through a Cloudflare Edge Broker, with a zero-setup simulated sandbox mode by default.
• Granular feature flags — search (Ctrl/Cmd+K with Lunr), TOC, reading time, text-to-speech audio player, tags, social share, back-to-top, image zoom, and comments can each be switched off, removing their markup, CSS, and JS from the build entirely.
• Code blocks — syntax highlighting with dark/light parity, line numbers, and copy buttons.
• Accessibility and audits — WCAG 2.1/2.2 AA target, :focus-visible rings, plus scripts for Google Search, WCAG, and security auditing.

Who is it for?

• Technical writers and software engineers who keep notes in Obsidian and want to publish them as a fast reading-focused blog.
• Developers who want full ownership of their content in plain Markdown on hosting of their choice, without platform lock-in.
• Minimalists who want to strip the theme down to a bare Obsidian-like reading environment by flipping feature flags to false.

Use cases

• Obsidian note publishers: copy Markdown notes and local images into src/content/blog/ and get a static site with tags, reading time, and a sticky table of contents.
• Cost-conscious bloggers: deploy the static output to Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, or Netlify at zero hosting cost, setting the production URL through the SITE_URL environment variable.
• Comment-enabled sites: enable live GitHub Discussions by setting the repo in site.ts and deploying the ScatterLeaf Cloudflare Worker broker.

How does Minrock work?

Initialize with npx create-astro@latest --template rnt-rez/minrock or clone the repo and run npm install, then npm run dev to serve locally at port 4321. Edit src/config/site.ts for metadata and flags, add Markdown posts, then npm run build to compile static pages into dist/. npm install also installs a Husky pre-commit hook running npm run check.

Pricing

Minrock is free and open source under the MIT License.

FAQ

Is Minrock free?

Yes. Minrock is released under the MIT License, so you can use, modify, and self-host it at no cost. Hosting on static platforms such as Vercel or Cloudflare Pages is also free at typical blog scale.

Do I need a backend to use Minrock comments?

No backend is required for the default mode. Minrock ships in Showcase Mode, which simulates comments in browser memory. Live comments require GitHub Discussions enabled on a public repo plus a deployed ScatterLeaf Cloudflare Worker broker URL.

Does Minrock work with my existing Obsidian vault notes?

Obsidian Markdown notes can be copied into src/content/blog/ using frontmatter for title, description, pubDate, and tags. Local images can be pasted alongside the notes as page bundles.

Can I remove features I don't want?

Yes. Feature flags in src/config/site.ts are evaluated at Astro build time, so setting any flag to false removes that component's HTML, CSS, and client-side JavaScript from the static output.