[eddieroger]

I prototyped something exactly that way, including using Couch. It was really great, and quick as you describe, but ultimately still required a proper middle tier since the gap between a prototype and something deployable is often a lot bigger than one realized, and I ended up having to do a lot of work to get one situated in the middle. Though that ended up being an enterprise app, which adds complexity.

[mcorrand]

Yep, enterprise apps definitely fall under the "serious" umbrella :).

If a middle tier is a foreseeable requirement then this architecture does lose a lot of its charm.

I do think there has to be a way to easily strangle out the prototype but I haven't done much thinking about that yet. Maybe start reading from a pouchdb instance and proxy writes through a middle tier?