Let's be clear. This post describes an architecture that is offline-first, not local-first.<p>One of the main goals of local-first is so that the user of a local-first application owns their own data. (See Martin Kleppmann's paper on this).<p>As such, local-first applications don't necessarily have a concept of a central server. `git` is local-first, though most teams synchronize to a hub such as Github or Gitlab. This is a design principle to get away from having to sync to the cloud, making it more difficult to monetize as a SAAS. There seems to be a growing trend of people promoting offline-first applications as local-first, but structuring it to still lock people's data into their SAAS. (If you want to lock them in, then say so -- call it offline-first).<p>A true local-first mobile app would allow me to collaborate with someone in the same room using Bluetooth, even out somewhere where I don't have wifi, cell service or Starlink<p>See:<p>- <a href="https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://martin.kleppmann.com/papers/local-first.pdf</a><p>- <a href="https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/" rel="nofollow">https://www.inkandswitch.com/essay/local-first/</a> (Same, but in html)