Eloquent Draftable Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Editorial/content workflows: Enables "draft → review → publish" states on any Eloquent model (articles, product pages, policy documents, pricing sheets), letting editors iterate on a live-visible copy while a draft version exists behind the scenes. This is the core feature decision it informs — whether to support staged content changes rather than immediate overwrites.
• Versioned content vs. hard edits: Helps decide between a simple UPDATE model and a versioned model where the last published state persists until an explicit publish action. Relevant for any product with an audit/compliance or "don't break the live page" requirement.
• Build vs. buy (still lean build): With ~27 stars, effectively zero dependents, and only sporadic maintenance, the correct PM framing remains: validate the pattern, then implement in-house. The v2.1.0 release (Laravel 8 support, PHP 7.2 dropped) is a mild signal the package isn't abandoned — but it is still a reference implementation, not a dependency we should bet on.
• Roadmap signal: A "scheduled publishing" or "content approval" roadmap item is what makes draftable behavior necessary. If that's on the roadmap, this package is a low-cost spike to understand the data-model implications (keeping a published_at/state column, query scoping to hide drafts, preview routes).
• Scoping use cases: CMS pages, product catalog edits, legal/terms updates, email-template changes — anywhere "preview before publish" matters to users or risk.

When to Consider This Package

• Consider (as a reference, not a dependency) when you're spiking an editorial/publishing state machine in a Laravel app and want to see a minimal implementation pattern of draftable Eloquent models before writing your own.
• Consider when your team is Laravel-native, you're on an older framework version (Laravel 8 or the 7.x line this package targets), you want a quick proof-of-concept for draft/publish scoping, and you accept that you'll likely fork or reimplement it.
• The v2.1.0 release changed the maintenance picture slightly: it adds Laravel 8 support and drops PHP 7.2, which tells us someone is still tending the repo at least occasionally and that it will install cleanly on Laravel 8 / PHP 7.3+. It does not demonstrate support for Laravel 9, 10, 11, or 12 — so if your stack is newer than Laravel 8, treat this as out-of-support and expect to patch it yourself.
• Look elsewhere / avoid for production if any of the following hold — and most still do:
  • Your app runs Laravel 9 or later (well past what 2.1.0 targets); compatibility work will be on you.
  • You need a predictable release cadence, security patching tied to your framework's support window, or a bus factor > 1. One release does not make a maintained dependency.
  • You require battle-tested behavior across edge cases (relationships on drafts, soft deletes, bulk publish, queue integration).
• Alternatives to weigh: build a small internal trait/state column; or evaluate more actively maintained Laravel CMS/content packages (e.g., Statamic, or Laravel Nova-style publishing fields) if the scope is broader than one package.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

To executives: A small open-source add-on for our Laravel stack that lets content models hold a "draft" copy alongside the published version — the capability behind "edit without changing the live page." The idea is valuable and maps directly to our content/publishing roadmap. The package got a fresh release (v2.1.0, adding Laravel 8 support and dropping old PHP 7.2), so it isn't dead — but it's still low-maturity (limited adoption, no modern-framework support beyond Laravel 8, no meaningful dependent ecosystem). Recommendation holds: treat it as a design reference and build the behavior in-house with a few days' engineering rather than adopting a dependency that trails the framework. Net: low effort, low risk, high alignment with the content-workflow roadmap; no licensing cost (MIT).

To engineering: The package demonstrates a draftable-model pattern — a state/published_at column plus query scoping and preview resolution. v2.1.0 confirms it targets Laravel 8 (and drops PHP 7.2), so it's installable on an L8 baseline but nothing newer; if you're on L9+, expect to adapt it. It remains effectively a one-person, low-activity project. Recommendation: borrow the pattern, implement a lightweight internal trait we own, add tests for relationship and preview edge cases, and keep the dependency surface clean.