Lessons learned from building a sync-engine and reactivity system with SQLite
Lessons learned from building a sync-engine and reactivity system with SQLite August 15, 2025 Over the last couple of months, I’ve been trying to build the dream: A local-first, end-to-end encrypted and reactive app, with all of the user’s data in a local SQL database but continually synced to a remote server. This article summarizes my learning and how I ended up building a minimal sync engine for SQLite with full reactivity.First Try: PGlite and ElectricMy first try was with Electric and a WASM-based version of PostgreSQL called PGlite that can run directly in the browser. I even wrote an article about this setup. In a way, this approach is ideal as you have the same database engine locally as on the server. And because Electric syncs every change granularly, you are certain that…
