React Server Components: When to Use Them (and When Not To)

I still see projects slapping "use client" on everything out of fear of Server Components. After months of running them in real production apps, here's the mental model that actually stuck. 😅

🖥️ Everything starts as a Server Component — you only drop to Client when you need state, effects, or browser events.

⚠️ RSC isn't free magic: sequential fetches on the server still block the render.

🧩 Composition beats direct imports — pass Server Components down as children to Client Components instead of importing them inside.

📦 The bundle you never ship to the client is the cheapest optimization there is.

🔍 Debugging feels strange at first because not everything runs in the browser — and that's okay.

It took several real projects to fully understand this model, as it is rarely explained well the first time.