Yep, though coming from mobile development this was somewhat familiar. A lot of mobile apps are local-first, but I don't think it was called that back when I was doing mobile. Most mobile platforms expect this and provide tools to ease migrations, like Room on Android. Since CRDT approaches are still fresh, I imagine most people are rolling their own adhoc migration strategies. Ink & Switch is working on this: https://www.inkandswitch.com/cambria/
Sounds painful. It means your mutative data model changes, which exist, live somewhere else.