Improving DX with Contentlayer and MDX

MDX is great for rich posts, but wiring it to your data model can feel brittle. Contentlayer solves this by generating typed content derived from your frontmatter and body, so you can query posts with confidence.

Why Contentlayer

• Type safety: frontmatter becomes TypeScript types, catching missing fields early.
• Faster authoring: consistent metadata across posts means predictable rendering.
• Flexible ingestion: works with Markdown and MDX; supports computed fields like reading time.

Minimal setup sketch

• Install Contentlayer packages and add a contentlayer.config.ts defining your Post document with required fields (title, date, category, excerpt, author, body).
• Update next.config.js to wrap with withContentlayer.
• Replace ad-hoc filesystem reads with generated content exports (e.g., allPosts).

Authoring guidelines that scale

• Keep filenames slug-safe (e.g., improving-devex-with-contentlayer.md).
• Require date in ISO format and category from a small allowed set.
• Prefer short excerpts (150–200 chars) and add an optional tags array for better filtering.

Migration tips

• Start by generating types and running type-checks; fix frontmatter gaps surfaced by the compiler.
• Introduce the generated allPosts on non-critical pages first (like the archive) before switching the main blog listing.
• Add tests to lock in sorting and filtering behaviors while you migrate.

Beyond the basics

• Compute reading time in Contentlayer rather than at runtime.
• Generate RSS/Atom feeds and an XML sitemap from the generated content.
• Use the Contentlayer cache to speed up local development when content grows.