The ASP.NET Core renderer in Sitefinity DX is a stand-alone application that can be deployed and hosted anywhere. You can bring your IDE of choice and code against it. When developing new features and functionality, you work on the presentation layer of Sitefinity only, which lets you iterate at a higher speed. The build and deployment time is markedly shorter.
The Renderer app communicates with your Sitefinity application through a set of APIs. via the C# RestSdk package (Progress.Sitefintiy.RestSdk). This minimizes the margin of error and reduces the risk of vulnerabilities in frontend development. Additional API endpoints can be exposed from Sitefinity CMS to cover custom use cases.
The development model employs the same concepts of widget, widget designers and template development as MVC. With the ASP.NET Core renderer, we are leveraging view components, layout files and predefined building blocks, allowing no-code widget configuration. The extensive product documentation contains many sample widgets demonstrating the development model.