It's easy to tie yourself in knots trying to make a local first architecture work.

Local first is a neat solution to giving users true agency over their data.

But there are very gnarly problems that are solved nicely with a server architecture that need to be totally rethought in a local first world.

When it's local first you can also cut some security model corners.

If it's local and you have only a handful of collaborators, then it's OK to run arbitrary JS from any collaborator on the data.

But that obviously doesn't work for a larger scale system!

It sets a fundamentally low ceiling on usage of the system.

A system that is unsafe or difficult to expand to more users has a low ceiling.

Private cloud enclaves are like cutting the gordian knot.

The agency and control of local; the power and simplicity of the cloud.