A short field note from recent work.
An evaluation rubric for 2026 starter kits (auth, teams, billing, Filament panels included) versus a curated personal boilerplate: what a kit saves in week one and what it costs in month six when you fight its opinions. Ends with the short list of pieces worth standardizing across projects.
The short version
The honest answer depends on your context — team size, existing stack, and how much of the problem is really technology versus process. But the pattern I see repeatedly: start from the business constraint, not the tool. If you are researching laravel saas starter kit, the framing below is the one I use with my own clients.
How I approach it
- Name the constraint first — cost, speed, compliance, or maintainability — and let it drive the architecture.
- Prefer boring, proven building blocks; spend novelty budget only where it buys a real advantage.
- Measure before and after. If a change cannot show up in a number, it is a matter of taste, not engineering.
You can see how this philosophy plays out across my technology stack.
A full write-up of this topic is in progress — this is the working summary. Planning something in this area? Let's talk.