SOUTHWELL_MEDIA [v.2026]Every client project at Southwell started with the same ritual. Configure Tailwind. Copy SEO components from the last repo. Retrofit i18n when the client mentions they need Spanish two weeks into the build. None of these tasks took long on their own. Across dozens of projects, the hours accumulated into something we couldn’t ignore.
Velocity is what came out of that frustration. It’s the Astro 6 boilerplate we built for internal use, refined across two years of client work, and now released under an MIT license.
What’s inside
The practical answer: everything a marketing site requires and nothing it doesn’t.
Astro 6 with Content Collections. Tailwind CSS v4 running on the new CSS-first configuration. A three-tier design token system where changing your brand color means editing one variable and watching it cascade through buttons, links, focus rings, and badges without touching component files. Twelve UI primitives that meet WCAG 2.2 AA and function without JavaScript. SEO that scores 100 on Lighthouse before you configure anything. Dynamic OG image generation at build time. JSON-LD helpers for articles, organizations, FAQs, and breadcrumbs.
The piece that matters most: internationalization that works out of the box.
Why i18n became the priority
Astro ships locale detection and some URL utilities. The rest falls on you. Creating folder structures for each language, loading translations through middleware, building a language switcher that generates correct paths. These problems repeat identically across every multilingual project, yet the ecosystem treats them as bespoke implementation details.
The built-in getRelativeLocaleUrl helper has a bug that produces /fr/en/about when you want /fr/about. We discovered that one late on a Friday before a client launch.
Velocity includes a working translation system with interpolation and fallbacks. Routes generate from dynamic segments without manual folder creation. The language switcher ships functional. Hreflang tags and locale-aware sitemaps generate at build time.
Version 1.1 will introduce translated URL slugs. That means /en/about becomes /fr/a-propos-de-nous with proper reverse lookups for the language switcher. No Astro starter handles this correctly. We’re building the solution.
The CLI
npm create velocity-astro@latest my-siteFour optional flags let you control what gets scaffolded. --components adds the 27-piece UI library. --i18n wires up locale routing. --demo includes sample pages and blog content. Skip the flags for a minimal base.
Works with pnpm, npm, yarn, or bun. Pick your package manager.
Why release it
Southwell builds client websites. We’re not a template company and have no plans to become one. Velocity exists to accelerate our own work. Open-sourcing it costs us nothing and creates value for developers facing the same accumulated friction we wanted to eliminate.
The repo also functions as a portfolio piece. Prospective clients can inspect our component architecture, accessibility patterns, and code quality without signing an NDA or scheduling a call. That transparency works in our favor.
Get started
Documentation lives at velocity.southwellmedia.com. The source is on GitHub. Stars help with visibility but aren’t expected.
If you’d rather have a site built than configure one yourself, that’s what we do. Southwell delivers production marketing sites in 14 to 21 days. Reach out if that timeline interests you.