Build with sync engines: A roadmap
They say it's the future
A sync engine is the hidden machinery that keeps your data consistent across devices and users. Think Google Docs updating in real time, or your notes app syncing between your phone and laptop. Building one is surprisingly hard: you have to handle conflicts when two people edit at once, decide what data lives on the server vs. the device, and make it all feel instant. This lens is a curated collection of articles, videos, papers, and blog posts that walks you through that challenge step by step. From understanding the core concepts all the way to running something in production. Each phase builds on the last, and the resources for each phase are linked directly in the lens contents. If something catches your eye, feel free to leave a comment or drop an annotation, this is meant to be a living resource.
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Vocabulary & core tradeoffs

  • James Long - CRDTs for Mortals

  • The Hard Parts — Martin Kleppmann’s talks

  • Deciding between CRDTs and OT for data synchronization

  • CRDT data type paper by Marc Shapiro

    • Specify data model, conflict model, and bootstrapping approach

  • A Practical Taxonomy of Sync Engines: Nine Dimensions That Shape Real‑World Synchronization

  • Going local-first with Automerge and Convex

  • Reverse Engineering Linear's Sync Engine: A Detailed Study

    • Core sync engine primitives & server model

  • Collaborative Text Editing with Eg-walker: Better, Faster, Smaller

  • Interleaving anomalies in collaborative text editors

  • How the Linear's sync engine protocol works

    • UX features & app integration

  • Durable Sessions for Collaborative AI

  • Collaborative Editing in CodeMirror

  • Building data-centric apps with a reactive relational database

    • Client storage & library

  • Loro - A devtool library

  • Stop Re-Rendering — TanStack DB, the Embedded Client Database for TanStack Query

  • Why Local-First Software Is the Future and what are its Limitations

    • Scale, production hardening & case study lessons

  • How Figma’s multiplayer technology works | Figma Blog

  • Sync Engines are the Future

  • Microsoft Entra Connect Sync: Understanding the architecture - Azure - Microsoft Entra ID

  • Multiplayer Editing in Figma