x-ref in combination with $refs is a useful utility for easily accessing DOM elements directly.

It's most useful as a replacement for APIs like getElementById and querySelector.

x-ref a magic property that can be used to retrieve DOM elements marked with x-ref inside the component

Proxy: a JavaScript object which enables you to wrap JS objects and intercept operations on it.

This is core to Alpine’s reactivity, proxies allow Alpine to detect data updates.

$refs are generated and accessed at runtime so there's no in memory store of them. Each time you use try to access one, it will walk the DOM tree for the component and find all of them.