An introduction to local-first apps
summary
Built a project management app called makkuro.app over 13 months spending 30,000 from savings, using SolidJS frontend, Express + Prisma + Postgres backend, IndexedDB local store and a sync engine called replicas. UI shows immediate edits across tabs and handles ~1,000 tasks interactively, but relations require manual id bookkeeping, initial sync of large data (1 GB) can take ~1 hour, and incremental adoption is hard. Best fit: B2B SaaS with heavy text interactions.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction to local-first apps
- 1:11What are local-first apps
- 3:40Benefits of local-first apps
- 6:27Real-world examples
- 8:58Demo of Makuro.com
- 11:29How syncing works under the hood
- 13:37Code walkthrough of Makuro
- 17:54Challenges with local-first
- 19:59When to use local-first
- 21:26Tools to get started
- 23:14Q&A
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