Architecture Decisions Behind Building a Simple Personal Software Tool

A backend engineer documents the architectural decisions behind building a local-first personal desktop/mobile app using Flutter and SQLite. The post walks through choosing Flutter for cross-platform code sharing without a server, designing a debounced sync strategy using cloud storage (iCloud/Google Drive) as a courier rather than a backend, handling conflict resolution with Last-Write-Wins timestamps, managing SQLite schema migrations across app versions, and how the local-first architecture naturally enabled a one-time purchase business model instead of SaaS subscriptions.