This week we're joined by Peter van Hardenberg (PVH), director of the Ink and Switch research lab and co-author of the seminal Local First Software paper. Peter shares the origin story of local-first software, from his realization on a San Francisco train to his work at Heroku and beyond. We dive deep into Automerge, Ink and Switch's local-first sync engine built on CRDTs (Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types), exploring how it enables real-time collaboration while keeping data on your computer. We discuss the technical challenges of building distributed systems, the philosophy behind local-first software, and how projects like Key Hive are pushing the boundaries of decentralized data access. Peter also shares his vision for the future of computing, where software ownership and interoperability become fundamental principles rather than afterthoughts.

    https://www.pvh.ca
    https://www.inkandswitch.com
    https://automerge.org
    https://github.com/automerge/automerge
    https://github.com/pvh

00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:21 The Birth of Local First Software
00:12:09 Challenges in Local First Software
00:28:40 Auto Merge
00:31:17 Key Hive: Decentralized Data Access
00:44:09 Future of Local-First Software

devtools-fm

Peter van Hardenberg discusses Ink & Switch's research on local-first software and Automerge, a CRDT-based sync engine that enables offline collaboration. Automerge records every change as an operation, uses columnar encoding for efficiency, and achieves 38% overhead for version history. The local-first philosophy prioritizes running software on user devices while maintaining cloud benefits like real-time collaboration and cross-device sync. Ink & Switch is also developing Keyhive for decentralized authentication using public key cryptography, enabling offline permission changes without central servers.

Peter van Hardenberg - Ink and Switch, Automerge