Astro 5.13 adds static import.meta.env, Chrome DevTools workspace support, and much more

Astro 5.13 delivers notable updates for developers focused on environmental configuration and deployment flexibility. The new experimental.staticImportMetaEnv flag aligns import.meta.env handling with Vite, offering improved ease of use and consistent access to environment variables. Alongside this, the [Node.js] adapter now provides experimental support for loading prerendered custom error pages from any specified host. This update addresses common requirements for sites running behind reverse proxies or within containerized setups where external host URLs may be inaccessible.

Following these enhancements, Astro 5.13 introduces an experimental feature in the development server to automatically configure Chrome DevTools workspaces. This automation streamlines project debugging and development environments. The @astrojs/sitemap integration expands its capabilities by supporting customSitemaps, allowing externally generated sitemaps to be included within sitemap-index.xml files alongside Astro-generated entries — improving search engine optimization flexibility.

Astro DB now supports enums for text columns, meeting a popular user request and aligning closer to the Drizzle library’s expected behavior. Additionally, the Cloudflare adapter has been updated to locally support Cloudflare Workers KV when running astro dev and lets projects connect to remote KV namespaces if required, enabling local development with production data access.