Important announcement! We are running a hackathon starting on Friday, and the theme is sync-powered AI. We have loads of prizes planned, including bonus prizes from our partners - Supabase, TanStack, Neon, Mastra and Cactus. Sign up using the link here, and read more in our featured story down below.
Product updates shipped in February:
- Sync Streams in Beta: This is a big one. We now consider Sync Streams production-ready and recommended over Sync Rules. There’s a lot that we shipped since the Alpha: JOINs, CTEs, multiple queries per stream, nested subqueries, table-valued functions, and clearer validation errors. We've also added TanStack React Query support (%%useQuery%%/%%useQueries%% with a streams option) and Vue/Nuxt support via %%useSyncStream%%. Check out the release notes.
- Note: we’re still ironing out some kinks when auto-migrating more complex Sync Rules to Sync Streams.
- New PowerSync CLI and Agent Skills: We overhauled the CLI for better DX, support for self-hosted instances, and it's now open source 🎉 The main win: you edit instance and sync config in YAML files in your project instead of long command-line flags. As an extra bonus, we published Agent Skills that help coding agents build with PowerSync (thanks to everyone who prompted us to get these out). New CLI and Agent Skills.
- Sync Diagnostics Client: We refreshed the UI (shadcn/ui, TanStack Router), added state tracking, and a new SQLite File Inspector (drag-and-drop, no login). It’s now easier to inspect data, debug sync, and view the JWT. Try it out.
- PowerSync Service
- v1.20.0: You can now pass connection params (e.g. %%connect_timeout%%, %%maxPoolSize%%) via the database URL. Sync config errors now report source offsets so you can fix Sync Streams/Rules errors quickly. Full changelog.
- v1.19.1: Adds SQL Server 2019 support. Changelog.
- v1.19.0: Adds support for configuring logging level & format for self-hosted, and MongoDB compression support via %%snappy%% and %%zstd%%. Changelog.
- Client SDKs
- Attachment APIs for our JavaScript SDKs are now in %%@powersync/common%%, resulting in fewer dependencies to manage and improved consistency with APIs from our other SDKs. Docs
- We enabled trusted publishing for npm in our JavaScript SDKs for more secure package publishing. PR #841.
- Swift v1.11.0: Adds tvOS support. Changelog
- .NET: We shipped several DX updates ahead of the imminent beta release: more .NET-idiomatic schema definition and %%Watch%% APIs. Changelog and SDK Reference.
- Rust SDK: We released an experimental Rust SDK for standalone native environments. It’s an early entry point for Rust/C++, automotive, robotics, or embedded use cases where HTTP and SQLite are available. Your feedback will shape if and how this SDK evolves. Release notes and SDK reference.
- New demos & guides
Behind the scenes:
- In Unleashing the Power of Sync, our founding DevRel Engineer Dev Agrawal argued why sync engines beat manual or keyed state, and how to build agentic chat with PowerSync. Read.
- Thanks raffidahmad for a MySQL contribution that changes replication so we no longer store full row copies, which reduces storage use. PR #530.
- Congrats to LucaL1fe on launching Raccoon with PowerSync - gamified family task management that makes chores fun!
- Proposal: Tauri SDK: We’re exploring a Tauri (v2) SDK - Rust-backed SQLite and sync with a JavaScript API, starting with desktop. We’re particularly interested to know if your app’s business logic lives in Rust or JS. Discussion #873.
- Proposal: Incremental Compacting: We're proposing an incremental compact implementation so you can run compact more often (e.g. hourly) with less overhead. Especially relevant at high data volumes. Discussion #537.
Feature story: PowerSync AI hackathon
We're running a virtual hackathon and the theme is AI apps that use PowerSync as the sync engine.
There's over $5,000 in core cash prizes plus bonus partner and category prizes. Our partners include Supabase, Neon, Mastra, TanStack, and Cactus. There’s a category prize for best local-first submission, best use of our Rust SDK, and prizes for best use of each of the partner technologies.
The hackathon starts tomorrow, Friday March 6; submissions close March 20; and we’ll announce winners March 25.
Keep your eyes peeled for a blog post on Friday March 6 with detailed guidelines and rules!
Sign up here.
I'm excited to see what you build!
That’s it for this issue.