We’ve been building Astro sites for two years. Every project started the same way: copy the last project’s boilerplate, strip out the domain-specific code, rebuild the design system, reconfigure the deployment pipeline, and hope nothing broke.
After the tenth time, we stopped copying and started packaging.
What is LiteInk
LiteInk is a collection of Astro templates built for shipping, not for screenshots. Two free themes (MIT) and seven premium templates, each one extracted from a real client project, not designed in a vacuum.
The philosophy: your template should get out of the way. No runtime JavaScript unless you add it. No opinionated CMS you have to fight. No build configuration that takes a weekend to understand. Just HTML, CSS, and a config file.
What’s available
Free (MIT, open source)
- Margin — An agent-native blog theme with its own MCP server, structured API endpoints, Pagefind search, and dark mode. Not just a blog skin. It’s a theme designed to be operated by AI agents. (GitHub)
- PALE — A magazine editorial theme. Multi-column body text, drop caps, pull quotes. For people who think most blogs look the same.
Premium
Seven templates, each $79:
- TheMagazineNews — Magazine-style news site with editorial layout
- BioGenix — Biotech landing page with fluid SVG backgrounds, zero JS
- Nodus — Config-driven multipurpose template, 13 toggleable sections
- PRISM — Gallery minimal, inspired by Nothing’s design language
- FinFlow — Financial dashboard, 20 pages, 10 reusable components
- AstroWAKA — Architecture studio with warm paper tones
- InkDocs — Documentation theme (Astro Starlight fork)
Every premium template ships with:
config.tsas the single source of truth (content, toggles, analytics IDs, social links)- Component architecture (not a 2000-line index.astro)
- Full SEO suite (sitemap, OG images, JSON-LD, canonical, robots)
- RSS feed
- Dark/light toggle
- Cloudflare Pages deployment out of the box
Ink CMS: open source headless CMS for Astro
We also built Ink CMS because every client eventually asks “can I edit the content without touching code?”
Ink CMS is a Next.js 15 headless CMS designed to pair with Astro static sites. It runs on Cloudflare Workers with D1 (database), R2 (media), and KV (sessions). Features include AI writing assistant, version history, webhooks, API keys, and CSV import. MIT licensed.
It’s not Keystatic. It’s not a local-only editing flow. It’s a real CMS that runs on the edge, costs nothing to host, and doesn’t lock you into any vendor.
Why we’re doing this
The Astro template ecosystem has a quality problem. The official theme directory rejects most submissions. Theme Forest is full of WordPress refugees. Most “Astro templates” on GitHub are resume projects that break the moment you try to customize them.
We’re not trying to win on quantity. We’re shipping templates that we actually use, that we’ve tested on real deployments, and that come with the boring stuff already done: SEO, accessibility, performance budgets, responsive layouts.
If you’re spending your first week with Astro fighting the boilerplate, that’s a week you didn’t spend on your actual product.
Pricing
- Free themes: $0, MIT, no attribution required
- Premium templates: $79 each, or $199/year for all-access, or $399 lifetime
- Done-for-you customization: starting at $9 (keyword scan) via zens.ink/services
No subscriptions. No credits. One-time payment, lifetime updates on the all-access tier.
What’s next
- More templates (we have 5 more in the pipeline)
- Template marketplace for community contributors
- Astro 7 migration for all themes
- Ink CMS v2 with multi-site support
Browse templates at liteink.co. Free themes are on GitHub.
This is a build log, not a press release. If a template breaks, tell us. We’ll fix it.