Does my app need to work offline?

Reading data offline is relatively straightforward. Editing data offline is more complex, as two people may change the same record independently and the system must resolve the conflict when both reconnect.

Each conflict-resolution strategy has trade-offs. Last-write-wins is simple but can lose changes; field-level merging preserves more data but needs care to keep records consistent; manual resolution is transparent but requires user input; and conflict-free replicated data types resolve automatically but constrain the data model. The right choice depends on your business requirements.

A practical approach for many products is full offline reading, queued offline writes for the operations performed in the field, and a connection required for everything else.

Where offline support is required, the app should always read from local storage, even when online, so it behaves consistently.