Starshot is the meta initiative to improve Drupal's user and developer experience.
Drupal is a mature platform that has survived the PHP CMS wars and now faces competition from systems that are easier to use or start developing.
The goal of Starshot is to produce a new version of Drupal that can stand up against the competition and keep doing what it does well, providing a stable platform for complex, robust applications.
I am most excited about Experience Builder. Imagine the best features from other page building systems, with the ability to quickly add and edit components. There will be an inline code editor and visual drag and drop interface. I am wondering if my work on Code Sample would be useful. The design and development is just starting, so if you have any ideas, please contribute!
Other things that are coming are Project Browser, a new way to find and install modules. I hope this site can serve as some additional documentation for that initiative.
Recipes are config bundles you can add to your site and share easily. Drupal CMS is a pre configured build with extra Recipes to help newcomers get started.