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Typing Hooks, State, and Refs

TypeScript transforms React hooks from a loose collection of side effects into a type-safe contract. When you pair hooks with proper TypeScript generics and type inference, your entire component's state, effects, and refs become refactorable, self-documenting, and resilient to runtime errors.

This series walks through typing every core React hook—from useState inference to complex useReducer action unions, forwardRef with generic components, and custom hooks that scale across a codebase. You'll learn how to leverage TypeScript's type system to catch state shape bugs at compile time, write reusable hooks that don't leak internal types, and build a fully typed state module that teams can reason about months later.

By the end, you'll have patterns for the most common hooks and the confidence to invent type-safe abstractions of your own.

Articles in this series​