Production safety

title: CLI Production Safety description: Guardrails for destructive operations in production.

CLI Production Safety

Goal

• Prevent accidental destructive operations in production.
• Keep operator intent explicit for high-risk commands.

Production guard contract

Destructive commands require the following when APP_ENV=production or NODE_ENV=production:

• ELOQUENT_ALLOW_PROD_DESTRUCTIVE=true
• --force
• --yes

Choosing APP_ENV

Use APP_ENV to describe where the process is running.

• APP_ENV=development
  • local development
  • local test harnesses
  • non-production integration work
  • normal day-to-day CLI use on a developer machine
• APP_ENV=production
  • real deployed environments
  • production app servers
  • controlled production migration jobs
  • maintenance or release pipelines that touch production data

Do not set APP_ENV=production on your local machine unless you are intentionally validating production safety behavior.

Recommended combinations

Local development app

APP_ENV=development
ELOQUENT_DB_ROLE=runtime

Local development migration run

APP_ENV=development
ELOQUENT_DB_ROLE=migration

Production app runtime

APP_ENV=production
ELOQUENT_DB_ROLE=runtime

Production migration or maintenance job

APP_ENV=production
ELOQUENT_DB_ROLE=migration

This keeps the deployed app on least-privilege runtime credentials while letting a dedicated migration job use migration credentials.

Destructive commands (guarded)

• make:model
• make:registry
• make:controller
• make:service
• make:seed
• make:factory
• make:scenario
• make:migration
• migrate:fresh
• migrate:reset
• db:seed:fresh

Safe commands

• migrate:status
• db:seed (except precheck requirements for --all-connections)
• db:seed:precheck
• factory:status
• cache:stats
• list

Seed all-connections precheck

When running:

eloquent db:seed --all-connections --class UserSeeder

the CLI runs a bootstrap precheck for migration and connection consistency.

If precheck fails:

1. Run migrations first (migrate:run or migrate:run --test).
2. Retry db:seed.

Manual precheck:

eloquent db:seed:precheck --all-connections

Controlled production example

export APP_ENV=production
export ELOQUENT_DB_ROLE=migration
export ELOQUENT_ALLOW_PROD_DESTRUCTIVE=true
eloquent migrate:reset --all-connections --all-migrations --force --yes

Recommended operational flow

1. Run migrate:status before destructive commands.
2. Keep migration and seed operations inside CI/CD jobs.
3. Use least-privilege credentials for runtime vs migration roles.
4. Keep audit logs enabled around migration/seed windows.

Cache operations checklist

Use these commands during operational diagnosis or after destructive data resets:

eloquent cache:stats
eloquent cache:clear

Recommended use:

1. inspect cache behavior with cache:stats
2. clear cache after fresh rebuilds, restore tests, or seed resets if stale reads are suspected