State persistence
Keeping what someone typed, selected, or opened so a refresh, Back click, or interruption does not make them start over.
See it
What it is
State persistence keeps a person's unfinished work and view choices alive when the interface is interrupted. The draft survives a route change, selected filters survive opening a result, and a half-finished wizard survives a refresh. Gmail drafts are the familiar version: leaving the compose window is not the same as throwing the message away. Amazon keeping a cart alive across a sign-out and a new device is the same promise with money attached.
Reach for it on long forms, filters, carts, editors, multi-step setup, and any task people plausibly pause. Put shareable view state such as filters in the URL, short-lived drafts in sessionStorage, and larger offline data in IndexedDB. Restore enough context that returning feels continuous, then make Reset or Start over easy to find.
The gotcha is preserving state past its useful life. Old filters can make a healthy list look empty, stale drafts can overwrite newer server data, and browser storage is the wrong home for passwords or payment details. Version saved state, give it an expiry, and clear it after successful completion or sign-out.
Ask AI for it
Persist this flow's state across navigation and refresh. Encode shareable filters and sorting in URLSearchParams, save the unfinished form draft to sessionStorage after a 300ms debounce, and use IndexedDB only for large or offline-capable records. Store a schema_version and saved_at timestamp with every draft, expire it after 24 hours, and migrate or discard versions the current UI cannot read. On return, restore values before the first interactive render and show a quiet 'Draft restored' message with a Clear draft action. Clear saved state after successful submission, explicit Reset, or sign-out. Never persist passwords, card numbers, security codes, or file input values in Web Storage.