react-useeffect

Guidance for deciding when React’s useEffect hook is appropriate and when another approach is better. In React, an Effect is used to synchronize a component with something outside React, such as a browser API or subscription.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it when writing or reviewing useEffect, derived state, data fetching, subscriptions, browser integrations, or state synchronization in React.
Why use it?
It helps avoid unnecessary state updates, repeated work, and data-fetching bugs caused by using Effects for ordinary calculations or user actions. It also covers cleanup when Effects are genuinely needed.

Skill for Claude CodeCodex

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/softaworks/agent-toolkit/react-useeffect
Any agent
npx skills add softaworks/agent-toolkit --skill react-useeffect
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/softaworks/agent-toolkit

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Per session 46 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 545 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00046 $0.00545
Opus 5 $0.00023 $0.00272
Sonnet 5 $0.00009 $0.00109
Haiku 4.5 $0.00005 $0.00055

Measured yesterday against content hash f31e9925d6bb, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

react-useeffect scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured yesterday.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

Origin

Copies of this mod

4 near-identical copies found in the catalogue:

skills/react-useeffect/SKILL.md · 54 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 54 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

You Might Not Need an Effect

Effects are an escape hatch from React. They let you synchronize with external systems. If there is no external system involved, you shouldn't need an Effect.

Quick Reference

Situation DON'T DO
Derived state from props/state useState + useEffect Calculate during render
Expensive calculations useEffect to cache useMemo
Reset state on prop change useEffect with setState key prop
User event responses useEffect watching state Event handler directly
Notify parent of changes useEffect calling onChange Call in event handler
Fetch data useEffect without cleanup useEffect with cleanup OR framework

When You DO Need Effects

  • Synchronizing with external systems (non-React widgets, browser APIs)
  • Subscriptions to external stores (use useSyncExternalStore when possible)
  • Analytics/logging that runs because component displayed
  • Data fetching with proper cleanup (or use framework's built-in mechanism)

When You DON'T Need Effects

  1. Transforming data for rendering - Calculate at top level, re-runs automatically
  2. Handling user events - Use event handlers, you know exactly what happened
  3. Deriving state - Just compute it: const fullName = firstName + ' ' + lastName
  4. Chaining state updates - Calculate all next state in the event handler

Decision Tree

Need to respond to something?
├── User interaction (click, submit, drag)?
│   └── Use EVENT HANDLER
├── Component appeared on screen?
│   └── Use EFFECT (external sync, analytics)
├── Props/state changed and need derived value?
│   └── CALCULATE DURING RENDER
│       └── Expensive? Use useMemo
└── Need to reset state when prop changes?
    └── Use KEY PROP on component

Detailed Guidance

Read the full file on GitHub · 54 lines

Files

What ships with it

3 files beside SKILL.md in the same directory: the scripts, references and assets a skill reads on demand. Not counted in the per-session cost; read them before you install if any of them is executable.

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. yesterday First seen · 54 lines · 46 tokens per session scan A f31e9925d6bb

Subscribe to this mod's changes

react-useeffect is a skill published in the GitHub repository softaworks/agent-toolkit (2,401 stars, last pushed 5mo ago), licensed MIT. It adds 46 tokens to every session and 545 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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