alt Hacker NewsWe built LegendKeeper using Yjs! (It's a mapping app as well, but fantasy). Ended up rolling our own sync server to handle large scale multiplexing, as we have D&D game-masters with 25,000+ documents to manage. (I don't know how they do it, tbh!)
We opt for the central server as a super-peer and use the Yjs differential update system to avoid loading docs in memory for too long. While there are many things about local-first that are a huge pain in the ass, the UX benefits are pretty huge. The DX can be nice too! Getting to focus on product and not on data transit (once you've got a robust sync system) is pretty sweet. The first 4 weeks of launching our Yjs-based system was rough though; lots of bugs that virally replicated between peers. It requires a really paranoid eye for defensive coding; after several years, we have multiple layers of self-healing and validation on the client.
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I think a lot of people — including myself — would be very interested in a longer write-up of that system if you're ever interested in sharing more :)
Oh fascinating! I'd love to read more about what worked well & poorly when building LegendKeeper on top of Yjs.
What features do you wish Yjs had that would make your life easier?
I feel like we’re on the verge of seeing the start of a whole new wave of local-first apps (and "personal software" as mentioned here https://x.com/rauchg/status/1840293374059839726), but we’re really missing Rails-like frameworks that offer a complete package for development. Something that gives you all the tools you need—from syncing, conflict resolution, state management, authorization, background jobs in the context of local-first to deployment—without having to reinvent the wheel.
I built a simple SaaS [1] to get a sense of what's missing and while React Router + a syncing local first database [2] + $5/month Cloudflare gets you pretty far, I still found myself needing to think through a lot of pieces
[1] https://usequickcheck.com/ [2] https://fireproof.storage/