How I Built a Desktop Trading Journal with Electron, React, and SQLite

Last week I shipped a desktop app called Aurafy. It's a trading journal for futures traders that runs entirely locally. No cloud, no accounts, no subscription. I wanted to share the technical decisions behind it because I think the "local first" approach is underrated for tools that handle sensitive financial data. The Stack The app is built as a monorepo with three pieces: Server: Express.js + better-sqlite3. The server runs inside the Electron process (no child process spawn, which cuts startup time to under 2 seconds). SQLite with WAL mode handles all persistence. Every write uses synchronous = FULL because losing trade data is unacceptable. Client: React + Vite + Tailwind CSS + Recharts. Standard SPA that talks to the Express server over localhost. TanStack Query handles all data fetching and caching. Electron wrapper: The main process starts the Express server in-process, opens a BrowserWindow pointing to localhost, and handles native features like screen recording permissions and