Edge Static Asset Routing and On-Demand Islands

Delivering content-heavy pages from an edge network requires separating immutable static documents from dynamic compute. When every navigation invokes a server runtime, latency variance and request quotas scale linearly with page views.

Routing Hierarchy at the Edge

In an asset-first deployment, incoming HTTP requests are matched against the static asset manifest before any server handler runs:

Request Pattern	Execution Target	Latency Profile	Quota Cost
GET /notes/*	Edge Static Assets	4–12 ms	Free / Unlimited
GET /_astro/*.js	Immutable Edge Cache	2–8 ms	Free / Unlimited
GET /api/*	Worker Isolate	10–35 ms	Counted per invocation

// Example: Selective worker invocation for API paths only
export default {
	worker: {
		name: "edge-workbench",
		assets: {
			notFoundHandling: "404-page",
			runWorkerFirst: ["/api/*"],
		},
	},
};

Embedding Interactive Labs Inside MDX

Because MDX compiles to Astro components at build time, a static article can embed interactive client-side instruments directly inside the prose flow without turning the entire page into a single-page application:

Underdamped Spring Solver — Interactive TrajectoryRK4 / Analytical Damped Harmonic Oscillator

Stiffness (k)180

Damping (c)14

Mass (m)1.0

Damping ratio (ζ): 0.52Regime: UnderdampedSettle (2%): 540 ms

Trigger Impulse

Live Puck

Adjusting stiffness (k), damping (c), and mass (m) above recalculates the harmonic oscillator trajectory locally on a <canvas> element while the surrounding document remains zero-overhead static HTML.