Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud (2019)

• cr-sqlite

  28 2,418 9.7 Rust

  Convergent, Replicated SQLite. Multi-writer and CRDT support for SQLite

  

Also https://github.com/vlcn-io/cr-sqlite/ which is SQLite + CRDTs

Runs/syncs to the browser too which is just lovely.

• SyncedStore

  7 1,618 4.6 TypeScript

  SyncedStore CRDT is an easy-to-use library for building live, collaborative applications that sync automatically.

This article has been quite the inspiration for many projects and progress on this front. I think we're seeing more and more developments around CRDTs and local-first frameworks / applications.

I'm working on a few projects in this area:

- https://www.typecell.org - Notion meets Notebook-style live programming for TypeScript / React

- https://www.blocknotejs.org - a rich text editor built on TipTap / Prosemirror that supports Yjs for local-first collaboration

- https://syncedstore.org - a wrapper around Yjs for easier development

In my experience so far, some things get more complicated when building a local-first application, and some things get a lot easier. What gets easier is that once you've modeled and implemented the data-layer (which does require you to rethink / unlearn a few principles), you don't need to worry about data-fetching, errors etc. as much as in a regular "API-based" app.

Another interesting video I recommend on this topic is about Linear's "Sync Engine" which employs some of the local-first techniques as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo2m3jaJixU

• SurveyJS

  surveyjs.io sponsored

  Open-Source JSON Form Builder to Create Dynamic Forms Right in Your App. With SurveyJS form UI libraries, you can build and style forms in a fully-integrated drag & drop form builder, render them in your JS app, and store form submission data in any backend, inc. PHP, ASP.NET Core, and Node.js.

  

• corrosion

  5 586 9.4 Rust

  Gossip-based service discovery (and more) for large distributed systems. (by superfly)

  

Couchdb/pouchdb remains one of the best: it's super easy to setup and is production-ready, but it's gonna be json docs with no transactions, so it can be limiting.

Y.js and automerge emerged as solutions combining CRDTs and content transfer, they look really promising. There is a Y.rs version if that's better for you.

I've always dreamt of building something on top of Syncthing, ie something that would use file synchronization. It's more versatile and will definitely last longer than anything else, and it has some built-in capabilities for having a third party helping transport but not being allowed to read content.

I recently came across https://github.com/superfly/corrosion , a service discovery and state management tool that is working completely p2p. CR-SQLite, in particular, allows multiple tables from multiple databases to be merged thanks to CRDTs. I'm sure there's a lot to build on top of it.

I feel like you're not really interested in full p2p but want some centralization point to manage some auth stuff, so I'd investigate couchdb/pouchdb first.

• mps3

  3 10 9.4 TypeScript

  Infraless Database over any s3 storage API. (by endpointservices)

  

Early days for me, but along the lines of syncthing I am building a local first solution on top of the s3 API https://github.com/endpointservices/mps3 being where I think the lowest common denominator is (e.g. works with minio).

• TypeCell

  2 372 5.5 TypeScript
  

Thanks, great feedback!

Although it's entirely architected on a local-first stack, I indeed haven't shipped the main benefit of this, a locally installable app. There's a WIP PR here that adds PWA support: https://github.com/TypeCellOS/TypeCell/pull/352. I'll highlight this more when this is merged.

Nevertheless, some of the benefits are already noticeable and come "out of the box" with building on a local first architecture, even if not shipping an executable yet:

• garage

  41 366 9.6 Rust

  (Mirror) S3-compatible object store for small self-hosted geo-distributed deployments. Main repo: https://git.deuxfleurs.fr/Deuxfleurs/garage (by deuxfleurs-org)

  

Ah, you should check out Garage (https://garagehq.deuxfleurs.fr/) for a self-hosted, cluster-y API of S3

• socket

  5 1,462 9.9 JavaScript

  A cross-platform runtime for Web developers to build desktop & mobile apps for any OS using any frontend library.

  

Definitely check out SocketSupply! https://socketsupply.co/guides/#p2p-guide

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• evolu

  3 1,046 9.8 TypeScript

  Local-first platform designed for privacy, ease of use, and no vendor lock-in

  

I made a local-first platform designed for privacy, ease of use, and no vendor lock-in to sync and backup precious data using SQLite and CRDT.

https://github.com/evoluhq/evolu

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