I've just launched my first personal site. I almost built it in Next.js anyway.
Not from habit - I just knew Next.js by reputation. Huge community, shadcn/ui ecosystem, every tutorial assumes it. It's the gravitational default for anything frontend. I stopped myself, thought about what I actually needed, and picked Astro instead. Writing this down so future-me doesn't skip that step next time.
This site is a markdown renderer with opinions. Five pages, zero forms, no auth, no database, no mutations. The interactive surface area is a theme toggle and some scroll-driven CSS.
Astro is a markdown renderer with opinions. Next.js is a backend framework that can also render markdown.
Using Next.js here would be like hiring a full-stack team to run a one-person blog. You get everything Next ships - middleware, route handlers, server actions, ISR, edge runtime, parallel routes - and use almost none of it. Every dependency you don't use still costs build time, bundle size, and decision fatigue.
