Thought Leadership, Pioneers, Research Labs, and Community Institutions

The local-first software movement was formalized by research contributions from independent laboratories, open-source developers, and specialized engineering startups[1]. Ink & Switch, an industrial research lab founded in 2018, serves as the movement’s primary research engine[1]. Key figures include Dr. Martin Kleppmann (author of Designing Data-Intensive Applications and lead researcher on Automerge), Peter van Hardenberg, Adam Wiggins, Mark McGranaghan, Aaron Boodman (founder of Rocicorp), and Steve Ruiz (creator of tldraw)[1]. Community development is centered around the annual Local-First Conference hosted in Berlin[2].

Key Entities and Institutional Bios

Ink & Switch

An independent research laboratory dedicated to digital tools for thought, malleable software, and distributed data systems[1]. The lab has published over 40 research projects and seminal essays, including Local-first software (2019), Peritext (2021), Cambria (2020), Keyhive (2024–2026), and Patchwork (2024–2026)[1].

Dr. Martin Kleppmann

Associate Professor at Johannes Kepler University Linz, former researcher at the University of Cambridge, and lead author of the 2019 local-first paper[1]. Kleppmann authored the Automerge CRDT library and pioneered research on local-first distributed consistency[1].

“Data ownership is not just a legal or philosophical concept; it is an engineering guarantee that user software continues working regardless of cloud vendor stability.” — Dr. Martin Kleppmann

Rocicorp

Software company founded by Aaron Boodman (co-creator of Greasemonkey and early Chrome engineer)[1]. Rocicorp developed Replicache and launched Zero, bringing query-driven local sync engines to main web applications[1].

Local-First Conference (LoFi Conf)

The flagship industry gathering held annually in Berlin[2]. LoFi Conf brings together computer scientists, database architects, and application developers to define local-first protocols, access-control models, and performance benchmarks[2].