Adam Wiggins

A photo of a type writer with the local first sigil in the paper, a notebook that says Lab Day, hosted by Ink & Switch, with an automerge sticker sheet. There is a clipboard saying Coffee Science and a coffee cup.

Lab Day will not be purely filled with talks - but also show live demos, creative experiments, and community projects.

A collaborative day that’s part unconference, part showcase, and shaped by the ideas that animate our community.

Lab Day is included in your ticket localfirstconf.com

The local-first community in Berlin has such brilliant energy; the talks from last year's conf still ripple through everything I'm building. What's the specific topic or talk thread you're most drawn to this year?

CFP Join us for the third edition of Local-First Conf. Connect with a rapidly-growing community in an intimate setting. Berlin 12-14th July 2026.

Browse the full topic list on our Call for Papers: www.localfirstconf.com/cfp

This is our third time out with Local-First Conf!

In past years we've thoroughly explored some core topics like sync engines and CRDTs.

In 2026, we're broadening into areas like identity, e2ee, malleable software, and open-weight models.

Tickets for Local-First Conf 2026 are now on sale

July 12–14 · Berlin · 300 people · single track

Theme: user empowerment in an age of fluid software.

We're going beyond CRDTs and sync. If you're building for user agency, this is your conference.

Tickets live now → localfirstconf.com

What is OAuth? Wherein I [try to] answer a seemingly straightforward question: "WTF is OAuth, anyhow?"

Over on dead-Twitter, @geoffreylitt.com asked the following question last week:

"I desperately need a Matt Levine style explanation of how OAuth works. What is the historical cascade of requirements that got us to this place?"

Here's my attempt at an answer: leaflet.pub/p/did:plc:3v...

Firehose authentic use · Adam Wiggins A prototype of email triage via a custom-trained model. This is a report of the first two weeks of real-world use.

=== What's next

I'll try another message source (maybe Whatsapp or Discord) and see if this triage approach generalizes beyond email.

Full post: adamwiggins.com/posts/fireh...

So it works! But why hasn't Gmail, Superhuman, or anyone else implemented something like this?

Best theory so far: the "annoying homework" of initial setup and ongoing review labeling doesn't work for a mainstream product.

=== Not so good

Emails sent to “Review” often feel like annoying homework when more than one or two at a time

The 1.8% of mislabeled emails triggered some irrational anger in me, signal that algorithm accuracy is a critical part of the UX

=== Good stuff

Loving that the priority inbox surfaces ~3 emails a day, always directly relevant to my current projects / life priorities

It was a joy to delete decades worth of accumulated Gmail and Fastmail filters

Two weeks of real-world use on Firehose, my email triage prototype.

• 572 emails automatically labeled
• 77% coverage (confident labels)
• 98.2% accuracy on confident ✨

All peer-to-peer systems have to compromise one way or another on this: they can decide that direct P2P is essential and simply fail, they can provide centralized fallback alternatives, or they can try to find/convince/incentivize another peer to route traffic on your behalf.

Hole punching for NAT traversal is a key technology for p2p, definitely. But there are vastly more technical issues beyond that. @iroh.computer is doing some good work here.

Exciting news for the local-first community!

1. Local-first Conf Berlin is back on 12–14 July: www.localfirstconf.com

2. The nice folks at @cultrepo.bsky.social have made a documentary about the movement: www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8...

😎

Local-First Conf 2026 Join us for the third edition of Local-First Conf. Connect with a rapidly-growing community in an intimate setting. Berlin 12-14th July 2026.

Save the date (July 12-14 in Berlin) and sign up for the mailing list or join the Discord to find out when tickets go on sale.

www.localfirstconf.com/

Malleable software, open social protocols, self-sovereign identity, and local models are a few topics on our mind.

What do you think should be on-topic for Local-First Conf 2026?

In 2026 we want to expand a bit beyond CRDTs and sync.

Our industry is rapidly changing due to LLM-assisted coding. But our core values of data ownership, user agency, and user empowerment are as salient as ever.

In 2025 we expanded to two days and double the capacity, while trying to keep the same energy.

This was a year that "sync engines" really came on the scene, and one whole day was dominated by that topic.

In 2024 we wanted to bring together academics, idealists, and builders to see if we would all gel.

We did, and a community was born! We sold out the 150-seat venue in just a few days.

Local-First Conf is back in 2026 for a third installment.

This year we'll double down on what's worked in the past... but do a few things differently.

Local-First Conf 2026 Join us for the third edition of Local-First Conf. Connect with a rapidly-growing community in an intimate setting. Berlin 12-14th July 2026.

We’re back. Save the date: www.localfirstconf.com

By @cultrepo.bsky.social, filmed at @localfirstconf.com firstconf last year

Featuring builders from our community including @martin.kleppmann.com @rsms.me @pvh.ca and many more

10m documentary film on the local-first software movement!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8...

I covered that approach in the post. LLM with tuned prompt and a few examples scores pretty badly. Fine-tuning on the other hand gets pretty close to the classifier approach, so that's an option.

Great post, hits home with my family's experience. I'm a US citizen originally, now dual US/German.

The feeling of computing on a chalkboard in the street

A projector screen with a scratch-like language for making 3D graphics

A projector screen with geometric morphs and patterns

A projector screen with data visualisation sketches

The London Future of coding meetup came back last night!

Now renamed to "the feeling of computing". More context on the name change: feelingof.com/the-name/

I handed over running it to @todepond.com, @mimireyburn.bsky.social, and Chee. They're doing great – same energy and wild demos as always

Love this:

> They use language like “this is the future of coding” when talking about their product. It’s snake oil — empty, self-important hype. This is something we’ve worked hard to avoid in our group.

Interesting parallel to my "actionable emails" goal!

I also want to be informed about changes in local or national policy that affect my life, as these may be actionable. For example, changing winds in German politics encouraged me to pursue dual citizenship last year.

This approach is the first one I tried before the classifier :)

I didn't like it because it led to exactly what you describe here, which is basically custom prompt tuning. That's the sort of "futz with your gmail filter rules" that I want to avoid.

But yeah maybe worth further experiments!