Please be kind.

I'm used to working on the web, so I always had control of the environment in which my web apps ran.

On desktop, this isn't the case. There isn't a common DB server that I can tap and get what I am looking for.

Let's imagine that I have friends and I want to build a program that my hypothetical friends can keep track of what they do all day at work. Due to limitations set forth by their IT department, they don't have access to a DB server, and everything must be done locally.

I would like to build this program in which everything works out-of-the-box. Open a program, make changes, and save.

What stack (I'm used to the web world) would you use?

While my day job is web development, I am starting to get into building tools that I can use to help me keep track of what's going on and have some automation. I have a few coworkers that I would like to share these tools with. I'm not looking to make anything public. I have a #$$@# of a time maintaining websites. But my interest has moved from the web to local dev. No, I'm not trying to keep track of what they do. But I would like to build a tool to help them and myself.

In the scenario mentioned above, please let me know a path I should follow.

Again, not new to programming. But there are a bunch of paths I could go down. I'm not a fan of quick-n-easy as I would rather know what is standard in this type of situation.

I have a background in PHP/MySql/JS/Python.