924: Sync Engines and Local Data

Wes and Scott talk about local-first sync engines—why they matter, what makes apps feel fast, and which platforms stand out. From LiveStore to Convex to Instant DB, they break down the pros and cons of each and debate what the “next React” might look like in a local-first future. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:52 Intro to local data: what makes apps feel fast 05:08 Could the next React be a local-first sync engine? 08:23 LiveStore 18:01 Zero 21:58 Instant DB 24:18 Brought to you by Sentry.io 24:43 Convex 27:54 ElectricSQL 29:48 PowerSync and PartyKit 30:51 Choosing the right sync engine 40:34 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs Sick Picks Scott: Rummikub Wes: Headphone covers Shameless Plugs Syntax YouTube Channel Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Scott Tolinski?

  Welcome to Syntax. Today, we're going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, which is local data and sync engines. Now, some of these options that we're going to be talking about are one or the other, some are both. We're going to be just kind of going down the lay of the land of all the different flavors out there and why you might pick certain ones, and what are some of the newer players to the game, because that's right, this stuff is changing all the darn time. My name is Scott Delinsky, I'm a developer. I live in Colorado. With me as always is Wes Boss. What's up, my dude?

• 0:32Wes Bos?

  Hey, I am up at the cottage and I unfortunately forgot my camera. For listeners who don't know, I have this little, the full stack shack. I don't know if you can, you can see it right there, right?

• 0:43Scott Tolinski?

  For people who don't know, I got the full stack shack.

• 0:46Wes Bos?

  I got the full stack shack and usually I'll bring up, I have, I have one of everything here, you know, I've got the microphone, I've got the compressor, the gate, I have pretty much everything. All I have to do is plug in my laptop, but I obviously don't have two of the beefy SLRs that we use, and I totally forgot it, and I'm bummed. So now I'm, I'm using my, my phone right now, which is an iPhone 13, which is, is decent, but it, I don't know, it looks a little bit weird, so please forgive the video right now.

• 1:18Scott Tolinski?

  It's not a Netflix-approved camera, but it is, it does look lovely. Um, yeah, cool. So, hey, it's a new week, new us, ready to go. Wes is at the cabin. I'm about to take a summer vacay here myself, so it kind of feels like the last day of school in a couple of, a couple of ways, but my kids are all, all home, so things are just kind of like, you know, they're in summer mode over here. I was doing some crazy yard work yesterday, so I'm just like, yeah, it's, it's full swing, right?

• 1:50Wes Bos?

  You're right, full summer.

• 1:52Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, full summer for sure. Let's get into the topic at hand, though, which is local data. Now, local data can be done in a number of very lo-fi, and I mean lo-fi in terms of, not the coined, you know, lo-fi local first, but lo-fi in terms of you're saving local data, you're handling, updating yourself, you're, you know, you're sending that data along, whatever, you're managing it yourself. It can be handled in very much those sort of ways with index DB. Some people use something like Dexy for that. You could throw it in all kinds of ways, storing that data and managing yourself locally. But what we're going to be talking about in this episode is going to be more of the managed

• 2:37Scott Tolinski?

  and sync side of things, where some of these solutions take your entire stack, essentially, except for your view layer, which is whatever you may be. And sometimes they take the database as well, and sometimes they just sit in front of there. And so what I hope to get out of this by the end of this episode is for you to understand who are the players and how they might fit into what you need. Because local data, as we've talked about many times on this show, is a really, really, really exciting way that people are working these days. Some of the best apps that you use, use data locally. So we just interviewed the folks from Superhuman.

• 3:22Scott Tolinski?

  Their platform is incredibly fast because of local data. People talk all the time about how great Linear is, local data. And the way these apps feel is they feel instantaneous. And you might think, my app feels instantaneous. I'm saving records to a database via an API. It's all running locally on my computer, but it feels very fast.

• 3:47Wes Bos?

  Yeah, it feels instant when your server is literally running on the same machine as your browser. But when you're calling APIs back and forth, it probably doesn't feel that fast. Especially like I'm up at the cottage right now, and we've got Starlink, which is pretty fast, but you certainly notice it versus like a hard-piped fiber connection.

• 4:08Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, and anytime you have data loading or mutations, 300, 500, 600 milliseconds feels like a lifetime. And what doesn't feel like a lifetime is like 10 milliseconds. It feels like the darn instantaneous stuff. And many people often account how native apps feel so much better than web apps. Why? Sometimes it's just because of UI frameworks and things that feel more native to the phone itself. And other times it's framerate, but many times it is. Saving and storing data, things like that. A lot of iPhone apps. Yeah, they're storing things to what? A SQLite database on the phone. And then they're handling a sync process in many different ways.

• 4:52Scott Tolinski?

  So if your mental model is, I don't understand why local data makes sense. Just think about the best apps that you use. And chances are, they're really good because they're super fast. They feel native, or they are native, and they're saving data locally.

• 5:08Wes Bos?

  I got a question for you before, before we even get into this. I saw a tweet the other day that says, "The next React won't be like React. It will be a local data first sync engine that adds it on." And they, they said, like, "When we moved from jQuery to React, those two things didn't have a ton of, of overlap in how they work." Right? Obviously, you're still wiring up clicks and fetching data and whatnot. But it was such a major change. And I think part of the reason we've never seen like a real React killer, like, we have lots of alternatives, right? We have Vue and Svelte and Angular and whatnot. But nothing has sort of like dethroned React,

• 5:50Wes Bos?

  similar to how nothing dethroned jQuery. And what will actually dethrone that will be sort of like a new generation. Do you agree with that? Where it's going to be something that is, this stuff is baked right in?

• 6:05Scott Tolinski?

  So as much as myself and some others have been talking about local data, I mean, you can check the receipts. I've been talking about this stuff for a long time. I still feel like the amount of people who, one, are using it, and two, like, truly understand just how transformative it is, are microscopic right now. And that tweet that is going around, because I think in the past year, people have been starting to take notice. The local first website has gone from just like a handful of collective, different, you know, experiments and tools and, and sync engines and things like that to like, a conference and a plat-

• 6:48Scott Tolinski?

  like, you are seeing the snowball roll down the hill right now. And it is like a, we're at the snowman's head. But I think we're going to get to that body soon enough. And when we do-

• 7:01Wes Bos?

  You don't start the head first.

• 7:03Scott Tolinski?

  That's what I'm, well, I'm, it's, it's, I'm saying size wise.

• 7:06Wes Bos?

  Okay.

• 7:07Scott Tolinski?

  We're not, the, the ball, the snowball that's rolling down the hill is about the size of a snowman's head, a child's snowman's head, but we want, we want that big old body. That's what we want, so.

• 7:18Wes Bos?

  The big snowman booty worth of local first.

• 7:21Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, snowman dump truck for sure. And I, and I think, uh, I, I think that is going to happen with whatever this platform ends up being that takes the cake and makes it that. And we'll talk about some of the platforms here, whether or not any of these will become that is yet to be seen. I do think there's enough of the rough edges around some of these things that, yeah, it, it takes a lot to get going with them, but it's kind of by the nature of them. And, and some of them are, are really super easy to get up and running, but take over your full stack. So as you'll hear in just a little bit about like what the options are, maybe you can conform your own opinions on if any of these

• 8:02Scott Tolinski?

  will be that, that sync engine of the future. I think that tweet is accurate. I personally, having someone who's worked on this stuff, who's given several conference talks and has like really used it, I, I think once more people get their hands on it and actually get a chance, they're going to be blown away by it. So let's get into one of the, I'm going to start this with an interesting note, an interesting new player to the game here. Specifically because I don't know if we've talked about this on the show just yet. And this is from Johannes, uh, who, you know, is behind Prisma. He, he's been around the

• 8:42Scott Tolinski?

  data game a long time. And we've talked a little bit about local first with Johannes pre this project. So this is called Live Store.

• 8:55Scott Tolinski?

  And LiveStore is an interesting solution to the LocalFirst platform that tries to do a lot for you. In fact, this is one of those ones that really takes over in a good way, where you aren't necessarily bringing this to your current project. Some of these other ones, you've got your own backend, you have your own database, you have things that are kind of like a normal setup, and you can kind of plug a sync engine in or your own process or your conflict resolution stuff in there. This is not that. This is really something that takes over, and it's an entirely different approach to storing data in a way. So this is called LiveStore. It's at livestore.dev.

• 9:39Scott Tolinski?

  There's currently adapters for React. There's adapters for Vue Solid. Somebody's putting together a Svelte one right now. There's a PR for it. There's React, I mean with Expo. That's one of the options. They have stuff that's a Tori adapter, Electron adapter. So it does seem to be something that is going to be, you know, pretty widely supported. Now, the way that this is interesting is that this all works in SQLite. Now, there's a SQLite browser in your client, or a SQLite, a SQLite database in your browser via Wasm using LiveStore.

• 10:21Scott Tolinski?

  So it's an embedded SQLite in your app that saves the information locally. And on your server side, there is a SQLite database as well. And unlike some of these other ones, what's being saved in your database is not necessarily typical data. It's events.

• 10:48Scott Tolinski?

  So the way that LiveStore functions is it's an event log, very similar to like, you might think of like Git or something like that, right? It's an event log. It's here's everything that happens. Last write wins. And it's a really interesting approach. So the entire thing is like, you have a to-do. That to-do is created. Task completed, whatever. Those are events. They're saved as events and like what the information is with those events. These events are the source of truth. And the current state of the app is a projection of the event log, a materialized into a local reactive SQLite database.

• 11:31Wes Bos?

  Wow. So instead of saving the data locally, like, like, let's say if you had like a to-do list and you changed, you added an item or you deleted an item or you had to change one of them. What would normally happen is that data would then sync to the backend and then hopefully you don't have any conflicts. And if there are conflicts, there's these CRDTs that will allow you to hopefully resolve them. Right? But this will, instead of that, will store what you did, very similar to like Redux, where it will just log out what you have done. And then I, I guess that sends that to the backend and it replays it in order to modify your data?

• 12:12Scott Tolinski?

  Yes. It's interesting. And a quote from David Kurashen, you know, he loves this kind of stuff. "Events are the most accurate representation of state." LiveStore gets it right. I have been goofing around with this a little bit, specifically trying to just get like the Svelte version of it working, which I haven't been because it's, you know, still a draft PR. But from browsing the documentation, from really getting into it and actually writing code, there's a lot of things I really generally appreciate about this. And it, it follows along kind of the same things I appreciate about zero sync, which we'll talk about next, is that It is a nice API.

• 12:57Scott Tolinski?

  I'm not having to think about managing versions of data. I'm not having to think about my manual writing to the database, which, you know, sometimes you want to think about that. But if I'm starting a project from scratch, I want it to all just, just kind of work, but still give me access to everything. This is a very different approach and I think it is an interesting one. Whether or not, long-term, it proves to be like the best approach? I don't, I have no idea. They do have a thing on their LiveStore versus Redux. LiveStore shares a lot of similarities with Redux in the sense that both are based on event sourcing. So you nailed that, Wes.

• 13:42Scott Tolinski?

  So there's also even like DevTools for this though, already. So I, I do think it's an interesting project. Their demos are very exciting. You gotta love an exciting demo. They do have an llms.txt in case you wanna, you know, actually plug this into your...

• 14:01Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 14:01Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, right. And for the most part, it handles auth in a way like a JWT-based auth, very similar to how Zero does it. You know, you're able to kind of step in there and get access to the current user and do your, your auth checks that way. There, there's a lot here. There is offline support.

• 14:20Wes Bos?

  So this replaces, like, let's take a look at like what this replaces. This does not replace React, right? Cause you would use it with your framework of choice, right? Reactors, Flutter, whatever. But it does replace any like state management you would do client-side, right? It does replace your, your backend ORM. So you wouldn't use like Drizzle with this or whatever. It's included with all of that. And it does replace, like you're saying, JWT sessions and stuff like that. So it does replace your like, your user system? Like, how far does this go?

• 14:54Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, there is no JWT-based auth inside of here. You would bring your own auth. You're just verifying your JWT and they can give you like a server-side...

• 15:05Wes Bos?

  This is like a real-time data stack for doing it, data both on the client and the server. Because in order to build...

• 15:15Wes Bos?

  Apps that are, that work like this, you have to have full buy-in, both on the client and on your server.

• 15:21Scott Tolinski?

  Correct. This does it all for you in terms of handling server-side data, client-side data, syncing, conflict resolution, offline.

• 15:29Wes Bos?

  Okay.

• 15:30Scott Tolinski?

  That kind of stuff. And because of that, there's like undo redo support, which is cool, right? Some of these don't have that kind of thing, because it is, it's like redux in that, in that sort of way. So this is one that I'm taking a very close look at, because I personally have been using Xero, and it's, you know, one of my favorite platforms on the web. And this is takes a different approach to solving a lot of the same, a lot of the same issues. So,

• 15:59Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 15:59Scott Tolinski?

  A brand-new player to the game, and you know, Johannes does great work, so not surprised that this is so nice. But definitely something that you should check out.

• 16:11Wes Bos?

  One really cool thing about the like undo redo replaying of events approach to this type of thing is that you're often able to go back in time and change or delete an event that has happened, maybe five steps back. And then it will just like, if it's, if it's able to, it will replay it. It's very similar to using Fusion 360 when, when you're making something, like let's say you make a box that's 500 by 500 pixels. And then you make something else that's 200 pixels inset from that 500 pixel box. And then you extrude that 500 pixels forward and you go, oh shoot, it wasn't 500, it was 450.

• 16:51Wes Bos?

  So you go back three steps and you simply just change that one step and then the rest will sort of replay forward. I really like that approach to these types of things. It's obviously kind of tricky in some cases, because you can, you can get into trouble with like, oh, you edited something that doesn't exist in the future, but. With Redux, I really like that approach. And I'm assuming I would really like this in LiveStore.

• 17:16Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, I'm gonna give this a nice shake here. Another thing I really like about LiveStore is that it plays really nice with CloudFlare. You can run this as a CloudFlare worker, the sync engine. So you have LiveStore as the sync engine. You can run it as a CloudFlare worker and then save your event log in a D1 SQLite DB. And then you have just your entire backend running as a sync server and a D1 database. And then you have your UI, which you can host on CloudFlare as well. That is all just like. The hosting, to me, in this is nicer than some of these other ones. Because, you know, the hosting side of things can be a bit of a pain sometimes. So I do like that.

• 18:01Scott Tolinski?

  Next up here is Zero Sync. Now, I've talked about Zero Sync a whole lot. Zero is kind of the second version of Replica in a way, where Replica was a product that came out and handled that sync layer and that local data, local cache really well. But you still had to do a lot of work on the backend. So when Zero came out, it was like, what if we take Replica and we handle that backend, that versioning, that database side of things for you? And with Zero, it is a client-side and server-side library. It's a sync engine and it does a lot for you, but you can bring your own Postgres database and you can bring your own Postgres data.

• 18:44Scott Tolinski?

  So if you have a Postgres database and you wanted to turn it to be like a local type of data syncing project, you could theoretically throw Zero on there without much strife, which is awesome. Zero, because of that, also works anywhere. Like you have Postgres databases, like you can connect Zero to like SuperBase or something like that. It works really well in those ways. And the way Zero handles it is it sends patch messages of the data back and forth when things change and your data is stored more traditionally.

• 19:19Scott Tolinski?

  In your index DB on your local database as patch messages of the data that should be there. And when data is changed, it then has the opportunity to sync with the database offline. Or sync with the database that's remote, not offline, the remote database. And anytime there's changes to the remote database, it pulls them into your local data. Anytime there's changes to your local data, it pushes them to your remote database. They stay in sync and load times on this thing are phenomenal. I've built a ton of projects now in Zero, even though it's still in Alpha. And the thing I like the most about working in Zero. It feels like it replaces your backend and your ORM.

• 20:03Scott Tolinski?

  And in that, you're, you're doing RPC calls, what look like that on the client side. And it just takes care of the rest. And to me, that's like, though these ones that are like taking care of all of the minutia of, you know, having an API endpoint and things like that. Really, really great.

• 20:24Wes Bos?

  Yeah, because then you're not setting up any, any like server endpoints. You're not setting up like resolvers or anything like that. You're just plug and play, you're ready to go. You got the client, the client side thing as well as the server setup.

• 20:40Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, and so with Zero, you typically, you're having your sync server, which exists as a server. You have your database, which exists as a Postgres database. And then you have your application, which exists as an application, could just be client side even. And that's pretty much it. Zero is really full featured and the Replica folks have been doing this for a long time. So they hit a lot of the edges. They know a lot of where the pain is and they've really smoothed that out in a degree. But one thing I really appreciate about Zero Sync is that they give you a ton of control, whether that is through, you know, how you're writing data, how you're handling permissions.

• 21:23Scott Tolinski?

  All of these things, they give you complete access. They let you step in there and so it will block things on the server, block things on the client if permissions aren't, aren't there. And for the most part, the entire system feels like. Like, once you get it set up, it feels like you're working in something like Firestore or something like that with still owning your database, with it not changing how that data is stored, and with the client-side experience, like I said, feeling like an ORM on the client side. It's great. A next one here is InstantDB. Now, InstantDB is, describes itself, if you want to get a

• 22:05Scott Tolinski?

  handle on what InstantDB is like, InstantDB describes itself as a Firebase, it's a Firestore or Firebase? Which one is it? Is it both?

• 22:16Wes Bos?

  Firestore is Firebase's database.

• 22:20Scott Tolinski?

  Okay. It is a, it is an open, well, it's an open source, and it's a Firebase alternative is really what it is. But it's, it is local data-based, and this one is fantastic because specifically, it is the one that does the most for you. It does everything for you. You have to do the least amount of work to use this. Now, unfortunately, it's, the way you're going to be using this is most likely not through self-hosting it. It's going to be signing up for a service, you get that, that API key, you download their library. Next thing you know, you've got a full auth system, though. You've got, you know, like,

• 23:02Scott Tolinski?

  MagicLink login, you've got normal login, because this comes with authentication baked in, like some of these others, like we've mentioned, you've got to roll your own auth or bring it from Better auth or any of these things. This comes with auth baked in. And I will say, the client-side library for this one is probably the nicest in terms of like, it feels like Firebase, right? It feels nice and easy. You can theoretically self-host this. There is no documentation on that. I think you would have to dive into the code to figure that out. I personally wouldn't do it. The reason why I'm not using this one is because they're a new company. There's something about that to me that's like, I'm not gonna... Build my entire company or anything on some sort of new service that is, you know,

• 23:47Scott Tolinski?

  brand new or whatever, but it is a really great platform. And when I built a demo in this thing, I walked away being like, this was the easiest one so far.

• 23:57Wes Bos?

  That seems cool. Like, I'm curious, like, why would somebody reach for this? I understand why someone would reach for it over like a Firebase, but like, why would someone reach for this over like a SupaBase, which is already the like Firebase alternative? Is it because of the local first stuff? I'm not quite sure.

• 24:16Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I think that's what it's trying to be. And if you want to see all of the errors in your application, you'll want to check out Sentry at sentry.io/syntax. You don't want a production application out there that, well, you have no visibility into in case something is blowing up and you might not even know it. So head on over to sentry.io/syntax. Again, we've been using this tool for a long time and it totally rules. All right.

• 24:43Scott Tolinski?

  Hey, real quick, I want to butt in here because we're about to talk about convex as being an option here for local first. And I want to really quickly state that the local first parts of context are not available yet. The sync engine and the multiplayer stuff is all in there, but the local first side of things are still in flux and still being worked. So if you are looking for something that is batteries included, that is local firsts or local data specifically, Instant DB is going to be more of that option rather than convex at this time. But convex is still a great option if you're looking for a sync

• 25:27Scott Tolinski?

  platform data storing. It's way more similar to SupaBase in its current iteration than it is something like ZeroSync or Instant DB. So just a quick note there. There's also convex, which you know what? A lot of people love convex and I haven't used convex, which makes me think that I need to really give this a fair shake because convex also happens to do a lot of these things. Convex is just a really interesting platform. It handles the sync for you. It handles the backend. When I've been talking about Instant DB or Firebase or SupaBase or any of these, people often say, Give Convex a look.

• 26:08Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Scott Tolinski?

  Convex is a paid product. Free and starter projects are free, professional teams, 25 bucks per developer per month.

• 26:17Wes Bos?

  Ah, the per developer per month always kills me. Like, the, I was just, the Instant gives you 10 devs to log in, but...

• 26:25Scott Tolinski?

  Let me tell you about Convex self-hosted. Convex, you can run self-hosted on your own infrastructure if you want. They have documentation on how to do that. So that's better than Instant DB on that. There is just a Docker file for that. And they even have docs on hosting it with Fly, Railway, those types of things. You can get this going yourself. So if you are that type of person, you can do that.

• 26:49Wes Bos?

  Tanner Linsley, he, he's sponsored by Convex, which...

• 26:53Scott Tolinski?

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:54Wes Bos?

  Like, you have to say that ahead of time, but like, he's, he's been telling me like, "Man, Convex is actually sick. People are sleeping on it. I certainly should..."

• 27:01Scott Tolinski?

  I think people are sleeping on it. I am too. Uh, for Convex, there's authentication baked in. Component, TypeScript building blocks for your backend. There's, yeah, man, over 80 OAuth integrations already existing for this thing. Resend integration, presence. Man, so you can get like, real-time sync presence detecting. I, man, maybe I am just really highly sleeping on Convex, and maybe Convex is that thing, but I, maybe I should give this a rip too. I'll, I'll just do like, the paid, or the free hobby one first, and then if I like it, then I'll, I'll figure out the...

• 27:38Wes Bos?

  Give it a shot.

• 27:39Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, there's so many interesting things going on in Convex, and every time I look at this website, I say, "Ooh, that's the one I'm gonna try next," and then I reach for the more of like, the, uh, more techie ones for some reason. But Convex is beautiful, and I think this seems like a great, great option. Um, Electric Sequel, we're getting into the land of sync systems that are more of sync systems and not...

• 28:02Scott Tolinski?

  Local data options, because a lot of these things so far that we've mentioned are sync systems and data options. Electric SQL is the sync in cache on the front end, but you have your backend. So this does handle local data. It does handle the sync, but just like what we talked about with Replica, you have to bring your entire backend still. You have to use your backend and you keep your own API endpoints as you typically would. Not a bad option for somebody who doesn't want to leave their API endpoints and their backend behind. If you like your backend, you can keep it. PG Lite is what this uses on the client

• 28:43Scott Tolinski?

  side, which is a Wasm-based Postgres. So PG Lite, it's a light version of Postgres in Wasm in the browser, and that's how it stores data on the client side.

• 28:53Wes Bos?

  And then on the server, I'm assuming you're just writing, you're just writing like resolvers? What is that called? Like the code that you write to actually, it gives you-

• 29:03Scott Tolinski?

  Just an endpoint in this point.

• 29:06Wes Bos?

  You gotta save it to your database. Honestly, like this is probably for existing applications, this is probably what people will reach for because there's a lot of people that have large existing applications and their entire app doesn't need to be done this. But maybe there's one part of the app that would be nice to have local first, but you're not about to start, put that in something totally different because you need that data in the same database for the rest of your application to work, right?

• 29:37Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 29:38Wes Bos?

  So this makes a lot of sense that you would reach for something like this in an existing app.

• 29:43Scott Tolinski?

  I think a lot of these things have great use cases for different users. Another one here option is Power Sync. Now, Power Sync is just the sync server. It doesn't handle the local client data and it doesn't handle the server side of things. It just handles the syncing, which is great if you're looking for a sync server. So another one that is a sync server, PartyKit, real-time sync. You've used PartyKit before, Wes. It gives you multiplayer, multiplayer and real-time sync, right? Some of the other ones, I guess in this case would be like Replica. Replica is more similar to Electric SQL where it handles the client-side data caching.

• 30:24Scott Tolinski?

  And it handles the real-time syncing, but what it doesn't handle is how that data gets resolved on the server. So you have to write an endpoint for pushing, write an endpoint for polling, you have to manage the versioning, you have to manage the sending of the patch messages, but it does give you that access to connect it to your backend, however that may be, whether that is a database that already exists or a new one. So I'm going to do a rundown of some of these quick ones and talk about what's best for who really quick, and then we can get out of here. How does that sound to you?

• 30:59Wes Bos?

  Sounds great.

• 31:01Scott Tolinski?

  Okay, so a little bit of a recap here, and in some of these you will hear me talk about some ones that we didn't go deep on, but there's a reason for that. So Power Sync is the best if you want a sync engine and you want to do the rest, right? Power Sync probably sits in there and you say, I want to have full control over this thing, give me just the sync. Electric SQL. Electric SQL is really great if you're deep into Postgres, you want real-time, you want collaborative, you want local data, you want those things, but you don't want to lose your endpoints. You want to keep your endpoints. Zero. Even though I say this as alpha software, it's the most mature of the do everything for

• 31:46Scott Tolinski?

  you while still letting you bring your Postgres database. This is a Postgres option. You want to add it to your current existing Postgres app, you don't care if your endpoints get, you know, axed and you want to like have that all managed, or you're starting a new project, you just want to bring a database, a sync engine, whatever. Zero is great. It's very fast, it works awesome, there's a big community for it, and it does a really super good job. So if that's where you're at, Zero is a great option. LiveView, you're living on the edge. You're trying something new, it's event data, it's event-based data, that sounds interesting to you, you want to give something a try that is like truly different and is also very plug-and-play, easy to host on CloudFlare and stuff, give LiveView a

• 32:29Scott Tolinski?

  try. Instant DB, simplicity at all costs, for sure. Convex, simplicity at all, well, I wouldn't even say simplicity at all costs with Convex. Convex is simplicity With cost of payment if you want to use their self or if you want to use their hosted version. Again, I got to spend way more time with convicts and that's kind of what I've gotten out of this episode. Replica hash, great. If you want your local data to work really nicely, you want that sync to work really nicely, but you don't mind handling versioning your data, you don't mind writing patch messages, you don't mind actually manually accepting those

• 33:09Scott Tolinski?

  push and pull. I managed a replica hash site for a bit. It was great. I moved it to zero. It is better in zero. Live blocks. Live blocks. I built stuff with live blocks like a year and a half ago and live blocks was like, we are local data, we're multiplayer, we're sync engines, and this thing just works really nice. If you want like collaborative multiplayer that actually saves offline to a database and a hosted service, that's great. Now, if you visit live blocks website, it says that live blocks is AI agents in your product. So you know what? I really like live blocks when I used it, even though it was a paid

• 33:53Scott Tolinski?

  product and all that stuff. I thought there were some really great things about live blocks, like it gave you presence, which is where you have like the multiple cursors like Figma type of thing. But the fact that their main product is now AI agents in your product leads me to believe that they couldn't make any money off of the prior one and are doing a pivot with that same tech that's powering it.

• 34:18Wes Bos?

  I also think that we're seeing this quite a bit right now where companies who have spent so long working on the tech are now realizing, holy crap, we got the tech to build this, these AI products. And let's not let somebody build a product on top of us. Let's build the products ourselves. Bolt that knew was working on stacklets for years and their whole web containers being able to run it. And then they realized, oh, holy smokes, we got the tech. We can run it and we can do this ourselves. And did you see Airtable pivoted to an AI app builder, which Airtable was like a

• 34:56Scott Tolinski?

  Uh.

• 34:57Wes Bos?

  How would you describe what Airtable was?

• 34:59Scott Tolinski?

  This is like project management, is that what it was? I get that one in Monday, Monday.com confused.

• 35:05Wes Bos?

  No, Airtable was like a, like an Excel, real-time Excel.

• 35:10Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes.

• 35:11Wes Bos?

  It was like a developer platform for like powering things and now they're just like, oh, it turns out you can build sick stuff on top of it. Let's pivot our entire business, which that one was very surprising to me because that's, seems like they were pretty well established and not like looking for a product market fit.

• 35:27Scott Tolinski?

  Partykit, you want real-time sync? Partykit also has pivoted pretty hard into saying the open source deployment platform for AI agents is now the first thing on their list.

• 35:36Wes Bos?

  Really?

• 35:36Scott Tolinski?

  Uh, but multiplayer, yep, yep.

• 35:39Wes Bos?

  Everybody's pivoting to that. So here's a question I have for you. I want to build, let's say I want to build an app where I, I want to use groceries. Let, let's call this like a grocery app, right? And my, me and my wife can add stuff to it. It's a list and you should be able to categorize it. There's AI in it so it could, it could be able to figure out like in which order should I pick these things? Given the layout of my store, maybe there's offline because I'm in a grocery store. Like sometimes at Costco, I can't get service in because of the weird roof on it. And let's say you want to build that app. It seems that's a relatively simple app, but it needs to have all of the, it needs real-time,

• 36:21Wes Bos?

  but also needs local data, it needs sync and it needs a database. I want to build that as fast as humanly possible. Which one of these are you reaching for?

• 36:31Scott Tolinski?

  Which one am I reaching for?

• 36:34Wes Bos?

  Not given the fact that you want, always reach for the one you haven't tried.

• 36:38Scott Tolinski?

  Oh, yeah, because that was going to be my answer.

• 36:41Wes Bos?

  Not you, but like someone listening, yeah, vu.

• 36:44Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. As fast as possible? If you're talking fast as possible, I think you will get app to hands the fastest with instant DB. That, not that that's what I would pick long-term or something, but just how fast it is to get.

• 37:03Wes Bos?

  You're just fussing around, you don't care about pricing or anything.

• 37:08Scott Tolinski?

  In that, in like five seconds, like no time at all. If you're talking about a more established platform, Convex, it looks great. You're, you're clicking a couple of buttons, you're having the sync. The, one of the biggest barriers to entry to getting like. App to your hands in a real world use case is figuring out like hosting of the sync server, hosting of your database, picking an ORM in many cases because like with ZeroSync and some of these, you still need to handle migrations. You still need to handle like your actual database. Like I'm, when I'm working in Zero, I have to write my schema in Drizzle and migrate that database

• 37:52Scott Tolinski?

  in Drizzle so that my Postgres database is ready for that local data sync, right? So if you have something that has a hosted version of it like Convex, you click a button, you get an endpoint or whatever, and then you can just connect it, that is going to be the fastest way. So you don't have to worry about where you're hosting that sync server. With Zero, again, it's an alpha, you're gonna hit, Rocky's bots are on the way, hosting the sync server like with SST can be a giant pain in the ass. You can always just host anywhere you host a Node app or if you're good with Docker, that's fine. But if you're talking Zero to 100, I think a managed service like Convex or InstantDB are going to be the fastest. I think LiveStore is gonna be very fast too.

• 38:36Scott Tolinski?

  I, you know, I haven't gotten a version of it up and working yet because of the Svelte integration, but like the fact that you can host it all on CloudFlare infrastructure, I could see that being, you start a starter kit up, you push it up to CloudFlare, you got your data, you should be good to go on that one. You're not having to write migrations for that even, so.

• 38:56Wes Bos?

  Beautiful.

• 38:57Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, so a lot of good options here and a lot of really interesting things to try. Is there a platform that you're using that we didn't talk about? There are plenty of them, trust me. I've tried so many of these things from Evolu to, man, I can't even, I can't even come up with most of the names anymore. Dexy, DexySync, and there's so many of these options out here. So if there's something that you're using that you're liking, let me know that if we should be spending some time on it and comparing it to these others. If you're doing any work with local data or local sync, let me know. Many people are wondering why the Replica 2 video never came out. It's because Zero was released soon after and I was waiting until Zero was at least in beta to do a Zero series. It's like...

• 39:41Scott Tolinski?

  You know, might as well just wait on that one. So that will be coming. We'll be doing a lot more educational content. If you want to see something with LiveView, you want to see something with Convex, let me know. I would love to put some of that stuff together. Sick.

• 39:56Wes Bos?

  Beautiful. Cool. Well, thank you for that. I really want to build something now and I think I might take the rest of the day to to spin up a couple of these. I've been, I've been hearing you talk about it, you know, and I've used Dexi myself, you know, but I kind of want to try something that's a little bit more like full stack, you know, that's all, it's all included for you. So.

• 40:17Scott Tolinski?

  I'm already building an app with Convex today. I'm already deciding it and I know what the app is going to be. And maybe we can, we can check back on that and do a full episode on Convex once we've gotten into the nitty gritty there. But I have a fun app idea that I've been kicking around for a little while. So I'm going to be, I'll be doing that.

• 40:34Wes Bos?

  Beauty. All right. Sure. You're wrapping up here?

• 40:38Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, let's get into the part of the show where we talk about sick picks and shameless plugs, things that we are enjoying, things that we just like in general. I got a sick pick for y'all. My wife is always into finding, we're not like a, we're not like a board game family. We're not playing all the crazy board games, but we do play games. We like to, you know, have, have a, you know, games that aren't, or activities that aren't based around Nintendo or something like that. So we've been always just on the lookout for fun little family games and we got this one, which is by no means like a rare gem or something, but it's a Rummy Cube. Rummy Cube is like a tile based, they're kind of like little dominoes based game.

• 41:22Scott Tolinski?

  And yeah, what's great about Rummy Cube is that there's math involved, kind of. Yeah, there's math involved, kind of. There's patterns, there's sequences, and there's like deeper skill involved. So if you're the type of person who wants to like geek out on getting some interesting skill-based play, there is that available. If you're a child and you're getting used to patterns and stuff like that. My, my daughter is a pattern wizard. Uh, she got my, my, uh, visual spatial brain. And, you know, she's six and she's able to identify these sequences and patterns.

• 42:05Scott Tolinski?

  And once she landed on the rules is really able to do it herself and, and like, look at the board in a way. And, um, it's just a really nice family game. We've played it a couple of times now. We've got the feel for it and, uh, it's one of those ones, I think that as you get better and better, as the kids get older, it's just going to become more and more fun for everybody. So Rummy Cube was really great.

• 42:29Wes Bos?

  This game reminds me so much of indoor recess, uh, when I was a kid. So I'm pretty sure this is a Dutch game. I don't know. I, it must be because like when I grew up, everybody played Rummy Cube.

• 42:40Scott Tolinski?

  Really?

• 42:41Wes Bos?

  Yeah, it was just huge in like the Dutch circles. And every time that you had like raining at school, you'd stay inside, indoor recess. And this is what they would, teachers would bring out and you'd, everybody would play this game.

• 42:54Scott Tolinski?

  That's so funny because we have, we just heard about it. We are like the last people in the world to hear about Rummy Cube. And it's because Courtney wanted to learn Mahjong, but like, she wanted something that the kids could play. She didn't know if that was like a good, a good game for like the whole family to play. And it seemed like a bit intense for everyone to learn. So we were like, oh, let's find something like that in a way. And we just found somebody saying Rummy Cube is similar in, in some sort of way. And we ordered, gave it a try and yeah, I, I would imagine it could be Dutch if, if, uh,

• 43:31Wes Bos?

  Here, let's, let's look it up. AI is telling me it was made by a Romanian, but gained its popularity in the Netherlands where it was initially marketed.

• 43:42Scott Tolinski?

  Interesting.

• 43:42Wes Bos?

  Interesting. Yeah, cool. I'm gonna sick pick these earphone covers. Everybody always asks me where I'm getting them. They're kind of obnoxious. But if you have a pair of headphones, and I see this all the time, like I'm on the Bose subreddit, I'm on the Sony subreddit, and every other post is like, "My headphones are shredded." Like, what the hell? And like, these headphone pads are fairly disposable, meaning that you'll probably get a couple of years out of them, and then they're gonna fall apart. And if you have a pair of shredded headphones, nothing better than getting a new pair of ear covers. It makes it feel like a brand-new pair of headphones. I've had these Bose QC35s for, I think, probably 10 years.

• 44:26Wes Bos?

  I've converted them to USB-C. I absolutely love them, but I replace the ear pads on them every, every while. So I have bought them from Wicked Cushions in the past. I've bought them from AliExpress in the past. They are fantastic. You can find them for your set of headphones. I highly recommend going and grabbing, grabbing a set.

• 44:49Scott Tolinski?

  Grab a set. That's what they always say.

• 44:51Wes Bos?

  Cool. Alright, Shambles plug. Check us out on youtube.com/syn-tax-fm. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already, and take a look at some of our videos. We've just released one on building a captcha for Kit Boga and his scammers. And man, that one was a hoot. You're gonna, certainly gonna wanna check that one out.

• 45:13Scott Tolinski?

  I'm gonna say, straight up, funniest video we've ever done. If you like to laugh, if you love laughs, lots of laughs, put this video on. My wife put it on, and she is not like even techie at all, and was like, "This thing is hilarious."

• 45:28Wes Bos?

  Everyone's built a captcha, yeah.

• 45:30Scott Tolinski?

  I'm sure it's not because of me. I'm sure it's because of you and CJ. The captchas are hilarious.

• 45:36Wes Bos?

  Oh, no. Stop's captcha was freaking, had me crying, the idea he had for it.

• 45:43Scott Tolinski?

  I had to leave the set because of Wes's. I had to run away, and I could not catch my breath. It was so funny. So, put this video on. Honestly, you will love it. I loved it. I've watched it a couple of times already, and I think it's the best thing we've done. So, check it out.

• 45:57Wes Bos?

  Cool. Alright, thanks everybody for tuning in. We will catch you later. Peace.