I teamed up again with Tomek Ducin for a hands-on look at front-end state management using React Query (now Tanstack Query). We cover how separating local UI state (like toggles and forms) from server data prevents stale info, redundant fetching, and messy code. Tomek showed how React Query can encapsulates: caching, time-to-live, and refetching and other stuff you shouldn't be implementing on your own. He also showed the overlap with backend patterns like pub/sub, proving these concepts span the entire stack.