Dato is a new way of building applications, heavily inspired by Meteor/Firebase/Relay, but informed by functional, data-oriented programming techniques.
The goal is to provide:
Seamless, permission-aware data synching between the sever and n-clients
Seamless, permission-aware rpc invocations
A more flexible, intuitive UI layer
Advanced tooling layer for time-traveling debuggers, state serialization, component layout, query editing, performance optimizations, and others.
Integration on the backend to stream into analytics, session replay, 3rd-party integration

Sean's been convinced there are better ways to develop applications across the stack for years, and built time-travelling debuggers, interface builders, layout tools, and graphic design tools in his quest to explore the space.