I've found Meshtastic is simply not ready to be set up in an environment without internet, as I …

Hearing this is exciting to me, because it is a very concrete and actionable target for a true “local-first” ecosystem and infrastructure. I was very disappointed to find that the “local-first” manifesto was not the “local-first” as I understood it. In my mind, I should be able to connect an app on my phone to another phone via bluetooth, and sync without going through a central server. However, it makes very little economic sense, if someone is building a SAAS product that locks customers into dependencies on a central server where services can be metered and billed. To my mind, those are “offline-first”. I have thought about what it would take to build a local-first software forge and package distribution, and yet, I couldn’t see a good reason to expend that effort. We have a lot of the pieces … with this example — if we want to be able to expand a meshtastic network _after_ a disaster…

I only ever flash via CLI or via "drag & drop" method. The web flasher is great for first-timers but there are 100%-offline methods for all the devices. The android client .apk can be downloaded directly from github at https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-Android/releases I do agree though, I feel there should be more effort to support "long term lack of internet" use case.

- Compiled firmware is available on GitHub, packed together with a script for flashing it. - You can use Meshtastic CLI. - Docs are in git repository in .mdx format: https://github.com/meshtastic/meshtastic All "sins" you mentioned are results of trying to be more convenient for users used to web browsers. Current state of web is pretty far from being decentralized, including web3.

I think your client specific concerns may not be valid. The web app seems to work fine offline. Save the page with your browser. Android app is available pre-built on github. iOS app can't be distributed to end users offline because of Apple. Blame them or buy a better phone.

> you don't get it just by plugging the board into your computer Which btw is a rather trivial thing to implement. I've seen devices host a control webserver with Ethernet-over-USB just for convenience.

I think a lot of those problems get solved with scale and diversity of users/contributors. Look at Linux. In the last decade there's been a huge boon and tbh, the biggest part of that is usability. UI/UX got a lot nicer and cleaner. I mean another part is Microsoft and Apple getting more hostile and people looking for alternatives, but usability is what provided those people space and a larger more diverse community is what made it more approachable. What I'm saying is, keep up the criticism but let's also make sure to interpret it as feedback rather than pure complaint. So we can turn these things into what they can be. After all, this is the place where we make great products, right? And never underestimate the criticality of documentation. It seems burdensome and annoying since it is always changing, but you can't get people to join your cause if they don't know how to. In your compan…