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Question: Do hooks "run" on a NextJS server?
Answer: Yes and no. State hooks, like useState and useReducer will get their initial data. But there is no re-rendering flow on a server so you should never try to use the state setter function from a useState or the dispatch from a useReducer. When you change the state of a useState or useReducer it doesn't happen immediately, you need a re-render cycle to see the new data. That doesn't happen on the server, so you will only see the initial state.
useMemo and useCallback are synchronous on the server and run just fine.
useEffect and useLayoutEffect don't run on the server at all. They only run on the client which is why some folks use them to detect when client components are mounted on the client.
useRef, like useState and useReducer will have it's initial value. If you assign a ref to an HTML tag that will not happen on the server because the server has no DOM to attach the reference to.
You could conceivably set the current of a useRef but that updated value would be cleared on the next request, so it doesn't make much sense to do that. Attempting to do that would mean that you would want some kind of persistent state on the server, which is an anti-pattern. Servers should be stateless.
