2025.01.23

📰 News & Discussions

Client state management, sync engines, and Foundry

"What we really want is declarative data synchronization. React lets us describe how we want our UI to look as a function of our data, and it uses a reconciliation algorithm to efficiently coordinate updates to our UI. In the same way, we should be able to declare the data our UI needs, and a sync engine should work out how to efficiently fetch that data and keep it up-to-date in response to both local and remote changes."

LoFi/22 Community Meetup (upcoming event)

The LoFi/22 community meetup is scheduled for Tuesday January 28th at 11:00am Pacific Time, with talks by Hakan Shehu ("Building Colanode"), Michiel de Jong ("Local-first personal data expoerting and applications") and Aaron Boodman ("Introducing Zero").

We will rewrite SQLite. And we are going all-in | Turso

"libSQL proved our core thesis – SQLite could indeed be more, and an open community is key to making that happen. But a fork, still tethered to its origin and moving cautiously, wasn't bold enough to generate the activation energy the community craved. A fresh, modern rewrite – unconstrained by legacy architecture – was what developers had been waiting for."

Upcoming changes to the Turso Platform and Roadmap

"Developers aren't just interested in using a better SQLite — they want to help build it. To fully support this vision and accelerate development, we're making strategic changes to focus more of our resources on core database development while ensuring our cloud platform remains reliable and efficient."

Local-first software development with Elixir by James Arthur (talk video)

"This talk introduces ElectricSQL, a sync engine developed in Elixir, and walks through how you can use it with existing web frameworks like Phoenix to develop local-first software."

🛠️ Tools & Resources

Beelay - A new sync protocol for Automerge

"This document describes a new sync protocol - tentatively named 'Beelay' - designed for efficiently synchronizing collections of Automerge documents."

Earthstar - A database for private, distributed, offline-first applications

"Earthstar is a specification and JavaScript library for building connected applications owned and run by their users."

Iroh - peer-2-peer that just works

"Iroh is a library for building on direct connections between devices, putting more control in the hands of your users." See also A tour of iroh

Building local-first apps with Expo SQLite and Drizzle

"In this article, we’ll walk through how to set up and build a local-first habit tracking app using Expo, Expo SQLite, Drizzle and Drizzle Kit."

CRDV: Conflict-free Replicated Data Views

"There are now multiple proposals for Conflict-free Replicated Data Types (CRDTs) in SQL databases aimed at distributed systems. [...] Our proposal, CRDV, [...] [uses] two layers implemented as SQL views: The first provides a replicated relational table from an update history, while the second implements varied and rich types on top of the replicated table."

✨ Apps

Colanode: Open-source & local-first Slack and Notion alternative

"Designed with a local-first approach, it helps teams communicate, organize, and manage projects—whether online or offline."

Introducing BUD-E 1.0: AI-Assisted Education for Everyone

"LAION e.V. is thrilled to announce the release of BUD-E version 1.0, an open-source, privacy-compliant AI education assistant framework. [O]ur local first peer-to-peer MLops architecture ... preserves the children’s privacy."

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