I love using the “Local-Only” philosophy you’ve built. Being able to own my data and sync via local P2P.
My question is simple: Is there a roadmap for enabling direct P2P collaboration outside of local networks?
Currently, if I want to collaborate with a teammate who isn’t on my home Wi-Fi, I have to rely on a central sync node. While I understand this is necessary for “always-online” availability, it feels like a departure from the “local-first” freedom I love.
I’ve been following other P2P developments in the tech space (like the work being done with hole-punching and distributed swarms), and I’m curious if the Any-Sync protocol is evolving toward enabling similar direct, serverless connections between users on different public networks.
I’m not asking for a specific integration, but rather wondering if this “true P2P” collaboration is part of your long-term vision to make Anytype fully serverless?
This is an interesting question, but I think it’s worth making some distinctions first. The terms you’ve used are related but not synonymous.
Local-only means that data only lives on one specific device.
Local-first means the local device is the master of the data, but servers can be used as a syncing and backup mechanism with end-to-end encryption.
Peer-to-peer is the means by which data moves from one device to another.
Anytype is built on local-first principles, that has a local-only mode, and has p2p syncing capabilities. So, it’s more accurate to say that Anytype is built on a local-first philosophy, not local-only.
Our team has a deep background in distributed systems, decentralised technologies, among other things. So we’re always tapped into the developments in those spaces on a personal level. That being said, how much that transfers into what current users of Anytype want is a pretty open question.
While we do have a small but enthusiastic part of our community that uses p2p, they’re not primarily doing that in collaborative use cases with other users on different networks—at least to our knowledge. It’s usually just to sync between their own devices. There are a lot of reliability issues as well as you move from different routers, network settings, mobile devices, etc.
We’ve spoken on this before, but the long-term vision is rooted in decentralised networks that enables users to permissionlessly connect and interact with each other without the need for a central authority. But there are many more technologies that need to be built to make such a reality possible. And beyond the technical aspect, having users desire and learn how to operate in this new data/syncing model is an entirely separate matter.