I’m not sure I’d call Figma local first. If I’m offline or in a spotty wifi area, I can’t load my designs. And unless it’s recently changed, if you lose wifi and quit the browser after some edits, they won’t be saved.
That's intentional: they need you and your data tied to the server to make money. But there's no reason why it couldn't be local first (except the business model), since the bulk of execution is local.
Incidentally, I think that's why local-first didn't take off yet: it's difficult to monetize and it's almost impossible to monetize to the extent of server-based or server-less. If your application code is completely local, software producers are back to copy-protection schemes. If your data is completely local, you can migrate it to another app easily, which is good for the user but bad for the companies. It would be great to have more smaller companies embracing local-first instead of tech behemoths monopolizing resources, but I don't see an easy transition to that state of things.
>Incidentally, I think that's why local-first didn't take off yet
Local first is what we had all throughout the 80s to 10s. It's just that you can make a lot more from people who rent your software rather than buy it.
Previously amateurs would crack Adobe software and then get a letter telling them they needed to pay or be sued when they went professional.
The cracked software was there to onramp teens into users. Adobe has burned this ramp and now no one under 14 uses it any more which is quite the change from when I was 14.
A better example than Figma is Rive, made with Flutter.
Works well local-first, and syncs with the cloud as needed. Flutter space lends itself very well to making local-first apps that also play well in the cloud.
