Show & Tell: WikiMasters — Dynamic Card State Caching & Optimistic Updates with TanStack Query

[TheoBlake]

Hey TanStack Query friends! 🚀

We recently released WikiMasters (wikimasters.org), a web-based Wikipedia card strategy game. We rely heavily on TanStack Query (v5) to manage dynamic encyclopedic state, card collection queries, and optimistic deck updates.

How We Leverage TanStack Query

1. Dynamic Wikipedia Card Caching: Articles fetched and normalized into trading cards are cached with custom staleTime rules to reduce repetitive Wikimedia API roundtrips.
2. Optimistic Deck Reordering: When players adjust their deck lineups or swap equipment in duel preparation, TanStack Query immediately applies optimistic updates with automatic rollback on error.
3. Infinite Queries for Card Archives: Exploring thousands of discovered historical and scientific cards uses useInfiniteQuery with paginated edge cursors.

Check it out:
🔗 Live Game: https://wikimasters.org
📦 GitHub: https://github.com/tik568/wikimasters-game

Huge thanks to Tanner and the TanStack team for making complex asynchronous client-side state trivial to manage!