The Architecture Of Local-First Web Development

Last October, I was sitting in a hotel room in Lisbon, the night before I was supposed to demo a project management tool my team had spent four months building. The hotel Wi-Fi was doing that thing where it connects but nothing actually loads. And I watched our app, this thing I was genuinely proud of, render a blank screen with a spinner. Then a timeout error. Then nothing.
I pulled out my phone, tethered to cellular, and got a shaky connection. The app loaded, but every click was a two-second