How's Linear so fast? A technical breakdown

Linear achieves its speed advantage by storing a local database in the browser's IndexedDB rather than waiting for server responses, allowing mutations to apply immediately while syncing changes asynchronously in the background. This eliminates the hundreds of milliseconds users typically wait for network requests in traditional web apps. The approach, built into Linear from day one, can be approximated in most applications using libraries like Tanstack Query with optimistic updates, though Linear uses a custom sync engine for maximum performance.