Sanity query returns no documents despite data being present in Studio

This sounds like a classic API perspective mismatch issue. Since Vision returns your documents but your client doesn't, and you've confirmed the documents are published, the most likely culprit is the API perspective setting.

The Root Cause: API Version Default Change

If you're using API version v2025-02-19 or later, the default perspective changed from raw to published. This is a breaking change that catches many developers off guard.

Here's what's likely happening:

• Vision tool uses the raw perspective by default (shows all documents including drafts)
• Your client is using the newer API version which defaults to published perspective
• Even though you published the documents, there might be a perspective configuration issue

How to Fix It

Option 1: Explicitly Set the Perspective in Your Client

Add the perspective parameter to your client queries:

const client = sanityClient({
  projectId: 'your-project-id',
  dataset: 'your-dataset',
  apiVersion: '2025-02-19',
  useCdn: false,
  perspective: 'raw', // or 'previewDrafts' or 'published'
})

Or set it per-query:

const result = await client.fetch(query, params, {
  perspective: 'raw'
})

Option 2: Check Your API Version

If you're using an older API version string in your client config (like '2021-03-25'), try updating to the latest version and explicitly setting the perspective.

Additional Debugging Steps

Since you've already ruled out many common issues, try these:

1. Check the actual API request: Open your browser's Network tab and inspect the actual API request being made. Look at the URL parameters - you should see ?perspective=published (or similar). Compare this to what Vision is using.

2. Test with Vision's perspective: In Vision, there's a perspective dropdown (usually in the top-right). Try switching it to published and see if your documents disappear. If they do, that confirms the perspective issue.

3. Verify document IDs: Use Vision with the raw perspective and check if your documents have drafts. prefixes. Even "published" documents might only exist as drafts if something went wrong during publishing:

*[_type == "yourType"] { _id, _type }

Look for IDs like drafts.document-id vs document-id. If you only see the drafts. versions, that's your problem - they were never actually published, just saved as drafts.

4. Check for document-level permissions: If you're using custom access control, verify that your API token has read permissions for these specific documents.

5. Try a different API version: Temporarily set your client to use apiVersion: '2021-03-25' to see if the behavior changes (this version defaults to raw perspective).

Why This Happens

Sanity uses perspectives to provide different views of your content. The published perspective only returns documents without the drafts. prefix, while raw returns everything. If there's any inconsistency in how your documents were published, or if you're comparing different perspectives, you'll see this exact symptom.

The fact that other document types work fine suggests this particular type might have publishing workflow issues or was created/modified in a way that affected its published state differently.

The Quick Test

Add this to your client code and see if your documents appear:

const result = await client.fetch(
  '*[_type == "yourType"]',
  {},
  { perspective: 'raw' }
)

If they show up with perspective: 'raw' but not with perspective: 'published', you've confirmed the issue - your documents exist only as drafts despite appearing published in the Studio.