Field Notes OS
Field notes that survive a week without signal — and sync themselves the moment a connection comes back.
The data died in the field.
Researchers spent days in places with no signal, logging readings on paper and phones, then lost half of it to a flat battery, a closed tab, or a sync that overwrote the wrong copy. The lab didn't need a "platform" — it needed notes that couldn't vanish.
The brief was narrow on purpose: capture must work with zero connection, for days, and never silently lose an edit. Everything else was negotiable. That wasn't.
Offline is the default, not the fallback.
I built it offline-first from the data layer up: every note lives locally first, the app is fully usable with the network unplugged, and a conflict-free merge (CRDTs) reconciles two researchers editing the same record without a "which version wins?" dialog. Sync is a background detail, not a button people have to remember.
On top of that sat a small design system — a dozen components for capture in bad light, with gloves on, in a hurry — so every screen the lab added later behaved the same way without my involvement.
The parts that earn trust.
Most of the value lived where nobody looks: a visible record of what's saved locally versus synced, edits that queue instead of fail, and a merge log a scientist can actually audit. Trust came from showing the state, not hiding it.
"We stopped losing data. That was the whole job, and it's done."
Have something narrow and real?
That's exactly the kind of brief I like. Two slots open for Q3.
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