Top all-time · #194
Ink & Switch
Company blog · inkandswitch.comprogrammingdesign
Ink & Switch is the company blog at inkandswitch.com, writing about programming and design. Since 2018, 233 different Hacker News readers have linked it 355 times, most often “Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-22, and you can follow it by feed.
Sometimes recommended · 9 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Ink & Switch mainly for its local-first software essay and its CRDT and end-user programming research prototypes. Commenters cite them as the reference for offline-first and local-first ideas.
- Recommended for · 9 comments
- Called the local-first essay "really really good" and "definitive"; Ink & Switch the "most exciting work" on CRDTs; "a good article"; end-user programming piece
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
An independent research lab exploring the future of tools for thought.
Most-linked posts?
- Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud33 people · 34 mentions · first linked 2019-05-01
- Local-First Software (2019)29 people · 44 mentions · first linked 2021-10-26
- Cambria: Translate your data with lenses (2020)23 people · 24 mentions · first linked 2021-12-27
- Peritext: A CRDT for Rich-Text Collaboration15 people · 22 mentions · first linked 2021-11-23
- Ink and Switch interactive homepage13 people · 14 mentions · first linked 2019-06-23
- Local-first software (2019)11 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2025-04-25
- Embark: Dynamic Documents for Making Plans10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2023-11-21
- Potluck: Dynamic documents as personal software8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2022-11-01
- Project Cambria: Translate your data with lenses8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-10-06
- Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps7 people · 7 mentions · first linked 2025-06-10
What Hacker News says?
>You have points, I agree that web technology is well suited in 2025 to make interactive applications. I agree that web apps are being held back from expressing their true potential. And while Electron is largely skewered for being bloated and heavy, the web can be fast and fluid. The main topic originated through OP's "why some users demand a 'native' app when the web app should be enough" for which I provided expl…
Comment linking /essay/local-first
on “Do not download the app, use the website”Submitted Local-first software (2019) as a story · 883 points
HN discussionGotta say, a link towards the end of this article is really really good: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html Referenced as a reason why CRDTs are a good way to enable this.
Comment linking /local-first.html
on “CRDTs are the future”Submitted Local-first software: You own your data, in spite of the cloud as a story · 566 points
HN discussionCRDTs seem very promising, but we still have a long way to go. The most exciting work in this area is being done by Ink&Switch [0]. They have a number of interesting real-world app prototypes based on CRDTs. - An interesting case where CRDTs failed is Xi-editor, where they tried to use CRDTs as the basis for a plugin system [1,2]. - One of the biggest problems with CRDTs is the overhead needed to keep track of the f…
Comment linking /
on “CRDTs are the future”Submitted Slow Software as a story · 438 points
HN discussionThe calculations alongside the notes remind me of the "dynamic annotations" in Ink and Switch's "Potluck" [0] demo. I wish there were more examples of this in note taking applications - this sort of progressive enhancement from unstructured notes to structured data is useful. [0]: https://www.inkandswitch.com/potluck/
Comment linking /potluck/
on “Show HN: Heynote – A dedicated scratchpad for developers”Submitted Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps as a story · 294 points
HN discussionThe kind of scenario screams a local-first applications and solutions, and it's the reason why the Internet was created in the first place [1][2]. People have been duped by the misleading no software of Salesforce's advert slogan that goes against the very foundation and the spirit of the Internet. For most of its life and duration starting back in 1969, the Mbps is the anomaly not the norm and the its first killer…
Comment linking /local-first/
on “Engineering for Slow Internet”Submitted Ink and Switch interactive homepage as a story · 266 points
HN discussionHave a look at https://offlinefirst.org/ and https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/ .
Comment linking /local-first/
on “Engineering for Slow Internet”Submitted Local-first software (2019) as a story · 262 points
HN discussionThe histogram is great, nice work; I want to ask about adjacent projects - user interface libraries that provide input elements for providing ranges and approximate values. I'm starting my search around https://www.inkandswitch.com/ and https://malleable.systems/catalog/ but I think our collective memory has seen more examples.
Comment linking /
on “Show HN: Unsure Calculator – back-of-a-napkin probabilistic calculator”Submitted Capstone, a Tablet for Thinking as a story · 254 points
HN discussionThis is the limited offline version of the Internet for the rural communities but what we need is the local-first version of the Internet for the rural community [1]. Fun facts, about one third or 2.6 Billions of the world's population has no or very limited Internet connectivity [2]. The main root cause is most probably power not the infrastructure. Most of the people in authority probably don't realize that this r…
Comment linking /essay/local-first/
on “Internet in a Box”Submitted Potluck: Dynamic documents as personal software as a story · 201 points
HN discussionlocal-first [1] software ;) That is the default port for `radicle-httpd`: an HTTP API that would allow you to authenticate (using your public/private key pair, that is stored on your machine), so that you can perform actions on the web-based interface as a specific user, through your local radicle node. [1] - https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first/
Comment linking /local-first/
on “Radicle: Open-Source, Peer-to-Peer, GitHub Alternative”Submitted Local-First Software (2019) as a story · 185 points
HN discussionInternet packet switching based architecture was originally design to withstand this type of outages [1]. Some people even go further by speculating that the original military DARPA network precursor to the modern Internet was originally designed to ensure the continuity of command and control (C&C) of the US military operation in the potential event of all out nuclear attack during the Cold War. This the time when…
Comment linking /essay/local-first/
on “Cloudflare outage on December 5, 2025”Submitted Ambsheets: Spreadsheets for Exploring Scenarios as a story · 178 points
HN discussionP2P & CRDTs are definitely production ready already. HackerNoon & Internet Archive are using (mine) https://github.com/amark/gun already. Local-first is very much the mantra of the whole dWeb community. I'm liking this naming "local-first" as an evolution to "offline-first". Ink & Switch had a good article on this: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html Also, for doing End-to-End Encryption, we've built some…
Comment linking /local-first.html
on “Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud”Submitted Keyhive – Local-first access control as a story · 167 points
HN discussionThere is a longer version of this article here: https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html
Comment linking /local-first.html
on “Local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud”Submitted Malleable software: Restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps (2025) as a story · 162 points
HN discussionThank you! Offline first[0] is planned for Q3/Q4 2019 :) [0] https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html
Comment linking /local-first.html
on “Show HN: Bloom – A free and open source 'Google'”Submitted Sketchy Calendar as a story · 156 points
HN discussionI like this idea, but how do you deal with pseudo bleed elements overlapping with sidebar content? For example many websites put navigation elements on the sidebar [1], or margin notes [2], [3]. I personally would love to see a css only solution for pseudo bleed with margin notes. The only solutions I've found so far use resize observer to absolutely position the margin notes using js or have hand coded positions an…
Comment linking /local-first.html
on “Full-Bleed Layout Using CSS Grid”Submitted Muse: designing a studio for ideas as a story · 137 points
HN discussionThe most useful application I see is moving toward building local first software[1]. And as for optimizations, my approach is surprisingly non systematic. I think about the program on the whole, and think through & investigate where all the time is being spent. There's usually ways to restructure things so the hottest code path runs faster. Sometimes that involves changing data structures or languages. Sometimes it…
Comment linking /local-first.html
on “Faster CRDTs: An Adventure in Optimization”Submitted Inkbase: Programmable Ink (2022) as a story · 113 points
HN discussion
