Credits, and what this is not
It is a port
Not "inspired by". Not "in the spirit of". A port of TanStack Query: the behaviour is TanStack Query's, the architecture is its, the option names are its where Dart allowed it, and its own test suite is ported case by case — every case left out is listed with its reason — and run against this code. Where query_kit deliberately behaves differently, the difference is written down with its reason — see differences from TanStack Query.
If you know TanStack Query, you already know this library. That is the goal, and how it is checked is the only interesting thing about the project.
Thank you
To Tanner Linsley, to TkDodo, and to everyone who has built, maintained, documented and supported TanStack Query.
This repository exists for one reason: we used TanStack Query, we loved it, and we wanted the same thing in Flutter. Server state is a genuinely hard problem that most teams end up solving badly and by accident, and TanStack Query is the answer that made it look easy. Everything good in here is an idea we took from them.
It is published under their MIT licence. Each package carries Tanner Linsley's
copyright line and the MIT permission notice in LICENSE-TANSTACK, because a
port that translates query-core and its test suite line by line is a copy of
substantial portions of the original, and the licence says so.
It is not theirs
This project is not affiliated with, endorsed by, reviewed by, or connected in any way to Tanner Linsley, the TanStack team, or the TanStack organisation. They have not seen it. They have no responsibility for it. The name similarity, where any exists, is descriptive — it says what this is a port of, not who made it.
Please do not take problems with this package to them. Bugs, questions and complaints belong in this repository's issues, and nowhere near TanStack's.
The package name here is deliberately not TanStack's:
docs/releasing.md
explains why, and the naming research
records what was actually checked — pub.dev's rules, what TanStack has and has
not said about community ports, and how ports in six other languages named
themselves.
It was written by AI
query_kit is an entirely AI-coded project: all code, tests and documentation were written by AI coding agents (Anthropic's Claude). A human maintainer set the goals and reviews releases, but did not write the code.
The agents also wrote the plan they worked from.
That is not a disclaimer bolted on afterwards; it is how the project was run, and the repository records it. Every decision is settled by an agent, and the record states the options, the answer, and why it beats the alternatives, so any call can be reopened from the record alone. The plan, its decisions and the research behind them are all public.
What the maintainer decided is a short list: the destination; that the binding's API shape would offer four equal call styles with no recommended default; and that neither published package may require a third-party dependency. Everything else — the architecture, the divergences, the test strategy, this sentence — was decided by an agent.
What stands in for human review is adversarial, and deliberately so:
- TanStack Query's own test suite, ported case by case. It is the one referee that cannot be talked round.
- Repeated external deep-dive reviews, each by a fresh reviewer with no memory of the decisions — and a fresh review of every fix.
- A standing rule that no reported finding is acted on until it has been reproduced. Findings that do not reproduce are written down too, with the disproof.
- Example applications that use the library for real, and a first integration into a production app.
What each of these found is on how fidelity is proven.
None of that makes the code correct. It does mean the claims on this site are the kind you can check, and every one of them names the file that would prove it wrong. Judge it on that.