I am interested in collaborating on a project to make building local first software a simple reality for developers along the “seven ideals” that Martin Kleppmann lays out (see https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf).
There has been a number of attempts in this space, but none with a simple developer experience, and I’d like to experiment around fixing that.
If anyone is already is already working in this space I’d love to talk with you.
Interesting. I’m a potential user. What do you have in mind that would make it a “simple reality”? I totally agree that it’s a mess right now. The hardest part for me was/is the sync and data consistency between syncs and modifications in-between sessions. I’ve used both OT and CRDT and the tooling isn’t simple.
I am thinking from a development perspective something like an easy set of React Hooks that essentially allow you to utilize CRDTs etc. without having to know much more about them than the operations available (add, delete, etc.)
From a user perspective, I am thinking that getting support for a local first approach is as simple as installing a Dropbox style service locally that enables storage and syncing across your devices. Applications written in a local first style would automatically then take advantage of this.
Ok, now I understand more. I think local-first and single-user mode is easy enough with the tooling we have right now (there are hooks, FS adapters that are almost plug-n-play). The trickiest part is still resolving conflicts/modifications across many sessions that multiple users have across time and lost sync periods.
Sending you an email. I am not working in this space per se but I am following it very closely, and I am super interested in seeing better dev tooling around the CRDT/Local first ecosystem.
There has been a number of attempts in this space, but none with a simple developer experience, and I’d like to experiment around fixing that.
If anyone is already is already working in this space I’d love to talk with you.