local-first

Bilingual

Why the future is local app
2 months ago
- Cloud apps cause delays and frequent 'spinners' that break user focus and speed.
- Locally installed apps provide instant responses by writing to the hard drive first, syncing to cloud in background.
- Local-first software restores data ownership, preventing lockouts from cloud outages.
- Modern hardware (Apple Neural Engine, Qualcomm, Nvidia) enables powerful AI locally, eliminating the need for servers.
- On-device processing enhances privacy by keeping sensitive data off servers, reducing breach risks.
- getapps.cafe builds native apps that work offline, keep files as real files, and respect user time.
Starting from Scale in the Design of the AT Protocol
2 months ago
- The author, a local-first advocate, worked on SSB and Beaker Browser before joining Bluesky to build AT Protocol, a federated network for high-scale open computing.
- AT Protocol departs from local-first designs due to scale requirements, aiming to handle Twitter-level traffic (e.g., 6,000+ tweets per second) while preserving openness and user autonomy.
- High-scale systems decouple read workloads, replicate data from a canonical store to purpose-built secondary databases (e.g., graph, OLAP), and use logs (like Kafka) for durable, low-coordination sync.
- Bluesky applied the same data replication pattern to the public WAN by treating network challenges as similar to internal datacenter faults, adding trust through signed merkle trees and defensive APIs.
- The Personal Data Server (PDS) network replaces userdata clusters; writes are signed and replicated via pull-based sync streams, allowing apps to recover by replaying from PDS hosts.
- AT Protocol currently handles 500-600 events per second (peaks of 2,000), with over 3,000 PDS operators, and aims to keep the internet as an open information commons.
API Testing Chrome Extension(REST, Soap, WebSockets, SSE)
2 months ago
- RePost is a lightweight, cross-platform API client and HTTP debugger supporting REST, SOAP, GraphQL, WebSockets, and SSE.
- It offers features like request organization in collections and folders, import from Swagger, OpenAPI, Postman, HAR, and cURL, and scripting with environment variables.
- The tool supports various authentication methods (Basic, Bearer, API Key) and provides JSON trees, performance waterfalls, media previews, and batch request execution.
- RePost emphasizes privacy with a local-first approach, requiring no setup or login, and keeping all data in the user's environment.
- Recent updates (v1.0.35) include a Focus URL Bar shortcut, a Magic Wand prettifier for request bodies, and a standardized URL bar across views.
- Version 1.0.34 adds a Saved Messages sidebar for WebSocket frames and new scripting snippets for JSON Schema, XML parsing, and cryptography.
- Version 1.0.33 introduces global keyboard shortcuts, instant export, Safe Boot and Reset Storage recovery tools, and improved stability.
- The tool serves as a Postman alternative for developers, QA, and requirements engineers, with a clean UI and support for five languages.
Hologram works. Elixir runs in the browser
2 months ago
- Hologram is an Elixir full-stack framework that runs Elixir in the browser, enabling local-first apps with offline capability and automatic sync.
- It features JavaScript interop, realtime pub/sub (like Phoenix Channels), client-side error handling, regex support, and AI assistant compatibility.
- Community contributions include porting 150 Erlang functions by 49 contributors, and the framework has been featured in multiple Elixir media outlets.
- Sponsorship from Curiosum and the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation funded four milestones, with three delivered and the fourth finishing; a second round is planned.
- Future roadmap includes built-in local-first data layer, auth, forms, testing toolkit, standalone mode, and eventual support for mobile and desktop from a single codebase.
- Hologram aims to eliminate the need for separate frontend and backend teams by enabling one developer to own the full stack in one language.
- Companies can sponsor via the Erlang Ecosystem Foundation or GitHub Sponsors, with benefits including roadmap influence and direct communication.
- Individual sponsors also support the project, and the author emphasizes that sustainable funding is needed to maintain full-time development.
Show HN: OpenMarkdown – A Markdown editor you and your agent co-edit
2 months ago
- OpenMarkdown is a local-first, feather-light, and fast Markdown editor built for users and their agents.
- It uses a native Rust core, ensuring quick loading times and native performance.
- The editor is AI-free; instead, it runs on the user's existing agent, providing direct integration.
- Files are stored as plain .md files on the user's disk, avoiding databases and lock-in for persistence and portability.
- Agents can interact with files as a wiki, opening the correct file and navigating to specific spots upon user queries.
- Features include agent-assisted highlighting and reworking of selected text, saved directly to the disk.
- Vendor options with varying speeds and SSO support are available at different monthly prices.
- Keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl+G and Cmd+P enhance control, allowing prompt access and file navigation without menus.
- Three editing modes (live preview, plain source, clean reading) are cycled with one key, with visible, syntax-colored markers.
- The editor supports collaborative planning with agents, as shown in an example of drafting an auth revamp plan.
- It ensures file integrity by not reformatting text, provides safe defaults like moving deleted files to Trash, and avoids accounts or cloud telemetry.
- The UI is trilingual (Chinese, Japanese, English), with a CLI tool for terminal file opening, and standard Mac shortcuts are supported.
Futo Notes
3 months ago
- Fast, private, local-first notes available on iOS, Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows with native apps.
- Notes are in plain markdown, avoiding vendor lock-in and ensuring portability across editors.
- Supports offline functionality, cross-platform desktop apps, wikilinks, and syntax that melts away while typing.
- Self-hosting is prioritized with options to use own sync or run an official server for personal network sync.

local-first

Why the future is local app

Starting from Scale in the Design of the AT Protocol

API Testing Chrome Extension(REST, Soap, WebSockets, SSE)

Hologram works. Elixir runs in the browser

Show HN: OpenMarkdown – A Markdown editor you and your agent co-edit

Futo Notes