From Prisma Founder to LiveStore: Building local-first apps with Johannes Schickling

Database School

Johannes Schickling, original founder of Prisma, joins me to talk about LiveStore, his ambitious local-first data layer designed to rethink how we build apps from the data layer up.

We dive deep into event sourcing, syncing with SQLite, and why this approach might power the next generation of reactive apps.

🔗 Links Mentioned

Want to learn more about SQLite?

Check out my SQLite course:

https://highperformancesqlite.com/?ref=yt

LiveStore

Website: https://livestore.dev

Repo: https://github.com/livestorejs

Discord: https://discord.gg/RbMcjUAPd7

Follow Johannes

Twitter: https://www.x.com/schickling

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/schickling

Website: https://www.schickling.dev

Podcast: https://www.localfirst.fm

Follow Aaron

Twitter: https://twitter.com/aarondfrancis

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarondfrancis

Website: https://aaronfrancis.com — find articles, podcasts, courses, and more

Database School

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI72dgeNJtzqElnNB6sQoAn2R-F3Vqm15

Audio only: https://databaseschool.transistor.fm

🕒 Chapters

00:00 - Intro to Johannes

01:00 - From Prisma to LiveStore

03:00 - Discovering local-first through Riffle

05:00 - What is local-first and who is it for?

07:00 - Why local-first is gaining popularity

10:00 - The inspiration from apps like Linear

13:00 - Gaps in local-first tooling in 2020

16:00 - Social apps vs. user-centric apps

18:00 - Distributed systems and why they’re hard

21:00 - The value of embracing local-first

24:00 - What LiveStore is and what it’s not

26:00 - Event sourcing as the core of LiveStore

30:00 - Benefits of event sourcing for apps

33:00 - Schema changes and time travel via events

37:00 - Materializers and how they work

43:00 - Syncing data across clients and devices

48:00 - Sync servers and cross-tab communication

54:00 - Architecture choices and dev tooling

59:00 - State of the project and future vision

1:06:00 - How to get involved