[halfcat]

“Counter app” is basically “hello world”, not how best practice is conveyed.

If you’re using an HTTP request to update a counter, it would be to update the persistent server-side state of that counter (which you’d also do if you’re using React and a JSON API).

No one is advocating for using HTMX for purely client-side state. They’ve been very consistent about this, recommending Alpine, vanilla JS, Stimulus, Vue, and so forth when you need pure client-side state.