Introducing astro-entry-meta: drafts, reading time and git info for Astro collections

After I wrote astro-git-dates, I made a list of what else Eleventy and Hugo do that Astro doesn’t. Three of the ideas turned out to be the same idea. Each one changes a collection entry at build time, before the schema sees it. Three packages for that would be silly, so I made one: astro-entry-meta (external site).

TL;DR

• It replaces astro-git-dates. Every git Last Modified and git Created keyword works the same, so switching is a new import and a new function name
• draft: true, a future publishDate or a past expiryDate leaves an entry out of the collection, like in Hugo (external site)
• Computed fields: reading time, word count, an excerpt, the last author, an “Edit on GitHub” link. Anything you can work out from the body or from git
• One wrapper around your loader, no dependencies

A Zod schema can’t see an entry’s body, but a loader can. That’s why computed fields live here, and why a list page can show reading time without rendering every post. On this site it gives each post and code note a reading time, a word count and an edit link. draft: true posts are gone from the collection too, so getBlog() lost its draft filter. The site rebuilds every 12 hours, so a post with a publishDate appears by itself.

Add it to your site

pnpm add astro-entry-meta

Wrap the loader of each collection that should use it:

// src/content.config.ts
import { defineCollection, z } from 'astro:content';
import { glob } from 'astro/loaders';
import { entryMeta, gitInfo, readingTime, type GitInfo } from 'astro-entry-meta';

const blog = defineCollection({
  loader: entryMeta(glob({ pattern: '**/*.{md,mdx}', base: './src/content/blog' }), {
    // Show drafts and scheduled posts in `astro dev`
    preview: import.meta.env.DEV,
    computed: {
      readingTime: ({ body }) => readingTime(body),
      git: ({ filePath }) =>
        filePath && gitInfo(filePath, { editUrl: 'https://github.com/me/site/edit/main/' }),
    },
  }),
  schema: z.object({
    title: z.string(),
    date: z.date(),
    // Computed fields must be in the schema, or it removes them
    readingTime: z.number(),
    git: z.custom<GitInfo>().optional(),
  }),
});

export const collections = { blog };

Now the frontmatter can do this:

---
title: Coming soon
date: git Created
publishDate: 2026-12-01
---

And a page can show the rest:

<p>{post.data.readingTime} min read · <a href={post.data.git?.editUrl}>Edit on GitHub</a></p>

Two things to know. Git dates need the full history in CI, or every file gets the same date. On GitHub Actions, set fetch-depth: 0 on the checkout step. And a scheduled post only appears when you rebuild after its date.

Moving from astro-git-dates

- import { gitDates } from 'astro-git-dates';
+ import { entryMeta } from 'astro-entry-meta';

- loader: gitDates(glob({ ... })),
+ loader: entryMeta(glob({ ... })),

Nothing else changes.

The code is on GitHub (external site) and npm (external site). If you miss another Eleventy or Hugo feature in Astro, tell me.