In fact, the toolbox this whole HN entry is about is a great example of how React is not just a rendering engine. It wouldn’t even be necessary otherwise. Peek at the code and what you’ll see is intense use of a DSL and built-in methods provided by React, to wrap native APIs that are otherwise usable without any wrappers.
I’m also a happy user of react-query, but it uses the same underlying hooks which are a moving target.