Journal
Lessons from building an offline-first app
When we started Fieldnote we assumed connectivity would be the exception to design around. It turned out to be the other way round: being online was the rare event.
Three things mattered more than anything else:
- Every write goes to local storage first, always. The network is an optimisation.
- Conflicts are normal. We use a simple last-writer-wins per field plus a visible history, rather than clever merging nobody understands.
- Sync status has to be visible but quiet. A small dot beats a modal.
The result is an app that feels faster than most online-only tools, simply because it never waits.