In this talk, I'll explain React Query from a different perspective. After having maintained React Query for over two years and having answered many questions (often the same ones multiple times), I feel like there might be a fundamental understanding missing about the lib. I'll start with a quick introduction about my journey into open source and how I got to know React Query, followed by showing which mindset change is beneficial when working with React Query - how to "think in React Query". I'll have 3 major takeaways: 1) React Query is not a data fetching library It's an async state manager, we'll quickly talk about what makes a state manager, why React Query is one and what "async state" means. 2) staleTime is your best friend I've seen a bit of confusion about how to use React Query as a state manager, so I'll explain why setting staleTime is mostly all you need 3) parameters are dependencies This is important to understand to show the boundaries between client state and server state, and is essential when doing state management with React Query I will then end with a note on "separation of concerns" and about the tradeoffs of just calling `useQuery` wherever you need it in your component tree.