Translatable Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Localization roadmap: v7.0.0 makes translatable-model support a first-class, version-locked companion to savannabits/craftable ^7.0.0 — enabling a decision to ship multi-language content management in the admin panel rather than deferring i18n to a later phase.
• Build vs. buy (vs. build vs. adopt): a legitimate alternative to hand-rolling translation storage/tabs or bolting spatie/laravel-translatable onto a Craftable admin UI. Choosing this keeps translation behavior consistent with the admin scaffolding your team already standardizes on.
• Stack standardization: adopting it signals "Craftable is our admin layer, and translations are part of that contract" — a scoping decision that constrains future admin/CRUD tooling choices and should be recorded as such.
• Vendor/ecosystem concentration risk: taking a first release as part of a monorepo family means a deliberate acceptance of shared upgrade cadence. This is a decision to track, not a detail to bury — it ties your localization feature's availability to Craftable's release schedule.
• Use cases unlocked: multilingual CMS/marketing content, per-locale product or category catalogs, region-specific admin content — anything where editors need to author the same record in multiple languages inside the existing admin.
• Roadmap gating: because this is a 1.0-line debut with no prior assessment or usage history, treat it as pilot-tier, not platform-tier. Sequence it behind a timeboxed spike on one non-critical content type.

When to Consider This Package

Consider it when:

• You are already on, or committed to, savannabits/craftable ^7.0.0 — the version lockstep is the package's core value proposition; outside that context it offers little differentiation.
• Your translation need is content-model translation (fields/attributes per locale), not UI string translation (that remains Laravel's lang files).
• You want editors managing locales inside the admin panel, not in a separate TMS.
• Your team is small enough that consolidating on one maintained ecosystem beats integrating best-of-breed parts.
• You can absorb a first-release maturity profile: expect thin docs, unproven edge-case coverage, and possible breaking changes across the 7.x line.

Look elsewhere when:

• You are not on Craftable — use spatie/laravel-translatable directly (mature, widely adopted, large community) and build the admin UI yourself, or use a Craftable-agnostic admin toolkit.
• You need a translation workflow, not just storage: translator roles, review/approval states, translation memory, MT suggestions, or vendor handoff. That is TMS territory (Lokalise, Phrase, Crowdin) — this package will not replace it.
• You need locale fallback and content governance at scale (hundreds of locales, per-market publishing rules, audit trails). Evaluate enterprise CMS or a dedicated translation layer.
• Supply-chain conservatism applies: first release, single-maintainer ecosystem, and a hard ^7.0.0 constraint on a sibling package are all review triggers. If your policy requires a maintained release history or a security response track record, this fails today.
• You cannot accept coupled upgrade risk — upgrading Craftable will force a matching upgrade here, and vice versa.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives (one paragraph): We are evaluating a translatable-content module that is now released as an official component of the Craftable admin framework we use. It lets our editors author and manage the same content in multiple languages from the admin panel, which is the cheapest credible path to launching localized experiences without buying a separate CMS. The trade-off is maturity: this is the first release in its line, it is tightly version-locked to the framework, and it carries single-ecosystem dependency risk. Recommendation: approve a bounded pilot on one non-critical content type to measure editor workflow fit and upgrade friction, and defer any platform-wide commitment until we have one upgrade cycle of evidence. Cost is low; the real exposure is schedule coupling, not licensing.

For engineering:

• v7.0.0 is the first translatable release published under the savannabits/craftable umbrella at ^7.0.0, so translation support is now aligned with the framework version rather than a loose add-on. Treat the version constraint as the headline: upgrading Craftable obligates a matching upgrade here.
• Expect a Laravel-native, Eloquent-oriented translation layer (per-attribute locale storage) surfaced through Craftable's admin CRUD. Validate before adoption: migration/schema shape, how locale fallback resolves, query behavior with large locale counts, and whether bulk translation editing exists.
• It is not a UI-string localization tool and not a TMS — it stores and edits translated model content. Keep lang files and any vendor translation pipeline separate.
• Concrete asks before we commit: (1) spike on one model, (2) document the schema and query cost, (3) pin exact versions and confirm the constraint graph resolves cleanly, (4) check release cadence and maintainer responsiveness, (5) write an exit plan — extracting to spatie/laravel-translatable should stay feasible, so avoid leaking Craftable-specific translation assumptions into domain code.