918: Extreme Native Perf on the Web with Superhuman

Wes and Scott talk with Loïc Houssier about how Superhuman builds lightning-fast, delightfully-designed email software. They dig into engineering philosophy, offline-first architecture, local databases, AI-powered productivity, and what it takes to create tools that people love.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

03:05 Inside Superhuman and Loïc’s role

06:49 Is Superhuman native? What’s the tech stack?

08:16 How Superhuman approaches product design and speed

12:17 Local-first architecture – Sync, storage, and performance

Realm

13:46 Vector search, AI, and privacy considerations

18:12 How the team ships fast and stays focused

21:27 Rethinking email for the future

26:54 Brought to you by Sentry.io

27:19 How calendar integration and smart features work

29:54 Where new ideas come from

31:54 Will there ever be a true dark mode?

33:02 Are people actually using keyboard shortcuts?

36:42 How shortcuts work and the role of the command palette

41:28 Engineering for speed – Costs and trade-offs

43:32 How Superhuman’s sync engine works

46:09 What code runs locally and what runs on the server?

46:51 How Superhuman handled the Google and Cloudflare outage

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