React Helsinki February 2020
Why Hacker News recommends it
Cited as the explanation of how Linear's fast, locally synced UI works.
What it is
React Helsinki meetup recording featuring a talk on lessons with Apollo GraphQL and Linear co-founder Tuomas Artman on real-time sync for web apps. The sync talk explains Linear's local-first architecture.
Recommended by 2 HN commenters across 2 different months, 2021 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends lewisl9029 · 2022-10 · on “The Future of the Web Is on the Edge”
Replicache ( [LINK] ) and clientdb ( [LINK] ) are the only productized versions of this architecture I'm aware of (please do let me know if anyone is aware of others!). But the architecture itself has been used successfully in a bunch of apps, most notable of which is probably Linear ( [LINK] , I remember watching an early video of their founder explaining the architecture in more detail but I can't seem to find it anymore (edit: found it! [this video] )). Basically the way authorization works is you define specific mutations that are supported (no arbitrary writes to client state, so write semantics are constrained for ease of authorization and conflict handling), with a client-side and server-s
Recommends seereadhack · 2025-08 · on “How Figma’s multiplayer technology works (2019)”
Linear's write ups / talks on real-time sync are also very good, if a bit old now. 1. [this video] 2. [LINK] Also see this overview of related tech here: 3. [LINK] And c.f. automerge from ink & switch: 4. [LINK]
Cites ngrilly · 2021-07 · on “React's UI State Model vs. Vanilla JavaScript”
I mostly agree, but having used Linear.app which has a crazy good and fast UI based on a local database synced with their cloud database, I'm not sure anymore: [this video] . I think it's important to define early in a project if the app is "cloud-based" or "local-based". If it's cloud-based, then only the server mutates state and sends views to the clients, as you wrote. Everything is simple. If it's local-based, then all data are available locally and mutated locally. The cloud is only used as mirror/backup and can support for some advanced features like full-text search. That's also a very clear architecture. That's how Linear works. Things become hairy and unnecessarily complex when no clear
Cites jorde · 2022-10 · on “Linear.app”
(Cofounder here) The app is fullstack typescript react application with custom realtime sync engine for instant updates and offline readiness. Our cofounder did a talk about our sync few years back: [this video] The app works both in the browser and we also distribute it with Electron wrapper for macOS and Windows, but it's essentially the same experience.
Cites enra · 2023-09 · on “Some notes on local-first development”
We created Linear[1] as local-first product. Back in to 2019 there wasn't much anything available so we created our sync engine. Today we have several thousands companies, from early stage to public companies as paying customers (companies such as Vercel, Replit, Substack, Square..) Our co-founder did talk about sync engine back in 2020 and recently did updated talk about scaling it [3]. The scaling has definitely taken lot of work and optimizing as datasets for company wide workspace with potentially thousands of users ands object they created can become quite large. 1: [LINK] 2: [this video] 3: [LINK]