Git solved this by pushing the syncing burden onto people. It’s no surprise, merge conflicts are famously tricky and always cause headaches. But for apps, syncing really ought to be handled by the machine.

If you want local-first, conflict resolution is something you're unlikely to be able to avoid. The other option is to say "whoops" and arbitrarily throw away a change when there is a conflict due to a spotty wifi or some such.

Fortunately, a lot of what chafes with git are UX issues more than anything else. Its abstractions are leaky, and its default settings are outright bad. It's very much a tool built by and for kernel developers with all that entails.

The principle itself has a lot of redeemable qualities, and could be applied to other similar syncing problems without most of the sharp edges that come with the particular implementation seen in git.