When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders

What do you do when you need to create some data but you haven't built out the UI for that data yet? A seeder is a great approach, but is it always the right one? In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we dive into a real project where starting with the most complex feature made test data management painful. Instead of exploding the complexity of our seeders, we built a minimal UI to manage test data. We also talk about some other unexpected benefits, and talk through the trade-offs and why detours like this should feel uncomfortable (and be tightly scoped).(00:00) - Starting deep exposes messy user permutations (02:45) - Seeder explosion vs. a minimal UI (03:45) - Reframing the “detour” after using it (05:30) - Why the mini-UI helped: faster iteration, fewer seed resets (07:45) - Dogfooding + tester debugging benefits (08:00) - Guardrails: detours should feel uneasy and stay tight (09:00) - Silly bit Need help on your Laravel project? Hire two experts and accelerate your progress.