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Engineering principles

These are the rules that keep Mindwtr local-first, sync-safe, and maintainable across desktop, mobile, web, cloud, API, and MCP surfaces.

Persistence

  • Every write is revision-guarded.
  • UI success should mean durable persistence.
  • Deletes detach and tombstone instead of blindly cascading.

Sync

  • Merge should be a fixed point.
  • Sync's own writes should not retrigger sync loops.
  • User edits during sync are sacred.
  • The sync document is one merge unit unless there is a transaction story.

Attachments

  • Upload bytes first.
  • Publish metadata second.
  • Treat missing bytes as a real failure, not a cosmetic issue.

Multi-process access

MCP, CLI, local API, and UI writes must respect one canonical store and a serialized write path. If a surface cannot safely write, make it read-only.

Dates and recurrence

  • One shared next-instance function.
  • Status outranks dates.
  • One active instance per recurring task.
  • Date-only values should not gain implicit times.

Release engineering

Every distribution channel is a different runtime. Validate the channel artifact, not just the source tree.

See also

Mindwtr is free, open source, and local-first.