It was one of those moments where something you once knew suddenly clicks again with fresh significance. Here was a URL doing far more than just pointing to a page. It was storing state, encoding intent, and making my entire setup shareable and recoverable. No database. No cookies. No localStorage. Just a URL.

Good candidates for URL state:

• Search queries and filters
• Pagination and sorting
• View modes (list/grid, dark/light)
• Date ranges and time periods
• Selected items or active tabs
• UI configuration that affects content
• Feature flags and A/B test variants --> I never though about this one

Anti-Patterns to avoid:

• state only in memory SPAs
• sensitive Data in URLs
• inconsistent or opaque naming
• overloading URLs with complex state
• breaking the back button