Forklift Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Location-aware feature discovery: The new findLocation repository method supports product work involving store locators, address lookup, regional availability, geo search, or other location-centric workflows.
• Domain-specific data access: Repositories are now specialized to model combinations, which can simplify product code for bounded contexts and reduce generic repository abstractions.
• Build vs. buy/leverage decision: If the team is repeatedly writing Laravel repository boilerplate and location lookup logic, this package may reduce custom plumbing; if location is not a near-term product need, adoption can wait.
• Roadmap risk planning: Because this is a 0.1.0 release with interface changes, any roadmap item depending on it should include migration and compatibility work rather than assuming API stability.
• Prototype and internal tooling: The package is better suited to pilots, internal tools, or early feature spikes than to core revenue-critical paths until the API stabilizes.

When to Consider This Package

Consider adoption when:

• The product has a concrete near-term need for location lookup or location-aware model access.
• The team already uses Laravel and a repository pattern, and wants less parameter passing through specialized repositories.
• The domain naturally maps to model-specific repositories rather than one generic repository.
• Engineering can tolerate pre-1.0 API churn, including changed repository interfaces and newly added methods.
• The dependency can be isolated behind an internal adapter so future package changes do not leak across the codebase.

Look elsewhere or defer when:

• The product has no location-related use case and the repository abstraction alone is not painful enough to justify a new dependency.
• The team requires stable semantic versioning or long-term API guarantees.
• The existing data layer needs complex query capabilities not covered by the package’s repository contract.
• The package would become a central dependency in a revenue-critical workflow before its API and maintenance posture are proven.
• The team cannot absorb migration work from interface changes in a 0.1.x release.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: This package is an early-stage Laravel component that could speed up location-aware product features and reduce custom data-access code. It is not yet a safe default for core systems because the 0.1.0 release changes repository interfaces. The recommended posture is a small pilot behind an internal adapter, with adoption expanded only if the location use case proves valuable and the API stabilizes.

For engineering: The release makes repositories model-combination-specific, reduces required parameters, and adds findLocation. That can improve clarity for domain-specific data access, but it is a breaking interface change in a pre-1.0 package. Pin the version, wrap the package behind an internal interface, and add tests around repository resolution and findLocation before relying on it.