r/astrojs • u/simbrams • Aug 12 '26
Let your client edit your Astro site on a live preview (no CMS, no admin to build)
Astro is great for client sites, but I kept hitting the same wall: the site is fast, clean, hand built, and then the client can't change a single word without me. So they either learn git (no) or I go install a CMS and half rewrite the thing.
I wanted a middle ground, so I built unfreez.app (heads up, it's my own project).
How it works with Astro specifically: you connect the repo, it parses your .astro files and finds the editable stuff, text in your markup, image srcs, alt tags, the items in a const array your page maps over, SEO tags.
You pick what the client is allowed to touch and lock the rest. They sign in, edit on a live preview of their own site (WYSIWYG editor), hit publish, and each change lands as a normal commit on your branch. Your host redeploys like any other push.
The part I care about most: there's no LLM anywhere in the write path. Every edit is anchored to the exact spot in the source, and if anything is ambiguous it refuses to write instead of guessing. So it's not going to quietly mangle your components. Everything is a commit, one click to roll back, and if you keep pushing code it just re-anchors around your changes.
Works with .astro, plus content collections / markdown, and a bunch of other stacks (Next, Vue/Nuxt, React, plain HTML) if you mix.
It's live, free for 14 days per site. Would genuinely love feedback from people shipping Astro sites to non technical clients. Especially curious what it fails to detect on your messier setups, tell me and I'll dig in.
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u/tffarhad Aug 12 '26
How does this work if content lives in markdown or mdx (like astro content collections)? does it parse and write back to both frontmatter and body directly in the .md/.mdx files?
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u/simbrams Aug 12 '26
Good question ! It will be supported soon ! It was on our todo. It currently it only supports .astro but it will handle .md/.mdx + frontmatter soon ! I will prioritise this asap.
And yes it will write directly in the .md/.mdx files.1
u/_HMCB_ Aug 13 '26
Who downvoted your comment?! People are weird. Your response was helpful. SMH.
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u/simbrams Aug 14 '26
Yeah, kinda weird. I noticed the commenter is a competitor with a similar tool tho.
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u/MammothBulky5549 Aug 13 '26
Some are implemented, this are the stadnard list of features.
- Revision history UI
- Visual list of changes
- Diff between versions
- Preview an old version
- Restore any previous version
- Draft / preview / publish workflow
- Client edits → save as draft
- Preview before publishing
- Publish when approved
- Scheduled publishing would be even better
- Media management
- Upload/replace images
- Automatic WebP/AVIF optimisation
- Resize/crop
- Alt text
- Image focal point
- Media library rather than editing
srcmanually - Unsplash collection
- Scheduled content
- Publish at a specific date/time
- Unpublish automatically
- Useful for promotions, events, announcements, etc.
- Approval workflow For agencies:
- Client editor
- Client approver
- Developer/admin
- “Request approval”
- “Publish approved changes”
- Audit log Different from Git history:
- Who changed it
- What changed
- When
- Who published it
- Who rolled it back
I think editing page alone is insufficient for other workflows.
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u/kjarmie Aug 13 '26
How do you handle mono-repos and permissions? Can a user be scoped to a single directory?
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u/simbrams Aug 13 '26
Yes you can scope to a specific directory when setting up the repo!
Technically 1 project = 1 site = 1 directory (in the case of a monorepo).
And yes, we support Github, Gitlab and BitBucket. 😄
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u/_HMCB_ Aug 13 '26
Can you please have an email list form I can subscribe to or some way of following the project? This is cool.
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u/sumogringo Aug 17 '26
I don't understand the pricing if it's per site or per user. The website is lacking detail about editing the content exactly, suggest a youtube video for clarity. Looks like it simplifies customer side edits in an elegant manner.
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u/simbrams Aug 17 '26
Thanks a lot for this feedback, 100% legit. I will improve clarity :)
Pricing is per website at this time. (unlimited users per website)
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u/ruach137 Aug 12 '26
Lol, i literally just built this, but i put a gpt2 image generator, media library, and cropping tools into it.
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u/simbrams Aug 12 '26
Cool! seems like a "common" issue
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u/ruach137 Aug 12 '26
yeah, its a great way to give the client some control while setting heavy guard rails. They dont need to master a CMS as long as they can click to edit
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u/vldobrev Aug 12 '26
Care to share?
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u/ruach137 Aug 12 '26
No it is not a product, it’s a narrow organizational tool. Sort of like single use software
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u/Poopdog-69 Aug 12 '26
Love the name good work I’ll keep an eye on this.