A new guide argues that debouncing Angular Signals directly violates their core design. Signals are deterministic state primitives, not asynchronous event streams like RxJS Observables. Applying time-based operators like debounce inside a signal breaks determinism, introduces async latency, and creates maintenance nightmares.

The correct architectural pattern is to debounce the event source—like a user input—before it writes to the signal. This preserves the signal's synchronous, predictable nature. Angular v21+ is introducing experimental schema-level debounce rules for forms, offering an official abstraction that keeps signals pure while handling time-based behavior.

For large systems, this distinction is critical. Misusing debounce couples time with state, obscures data flow, and leads to non-reproducible bugs. The guide advocates a clear separation: use Signals for UI state and derived values, and reserve RxJS for HTTP, WebSockets, and time-based operators. Respecting this boundary is key to avoiding accidental complexity.