The catalyst wasn't the whole reason
The first spark was simple: someone I cared about bought one of the new Vega OS Fire TV Sticks and suddenly had no practical way to use Jellyfin on it.
That personal problem pointed at a bigger one. A new generation of Fire TV hardware had arrived without the older paths Jellyfin users relied on, so Astra exists to make self-hosted libraries usable there again.
It is built for the living room version of that problem: install it, point it at your Jellyfin server, and hand the remote to someone who just wants to watch.
"Astra is for people who already own their media and want it to work on the newer Fire TV hardware."
Built for the Vega OS devices that could not use the older Jellyfin paths.