Build an Autocomplete Search Bar with React

Introduction Autocomplete search is one of the most impactful UI patterns on the web. Google, Amazon, GitHub, Spotify -- every major product uses it. When users start typing and immediately see relevant suggestions, they find what they need faster, make fewer typos, and discover content they did not know existed. Research from the Baymard Institute shows that autocomplete search reduces search abandonment by up to 24%. Yet building a production-quality autocomplete component is surprisingly difficult. A naive implementation -- slap an onChange handler on an input, fire an API call on every keystroke, render results in a <div> -- will work for a demo, but it will buckle under real-world usage. You need debouncing to avoid hammering your API. You need keyboard navigation so users can arrow through results. You need ARIA attributes so screen readers can announce suggestions. You need caching so repeated queries do not re-fetch. You need graceful handling of loading states, empty sta