Dev Log: 2026-07-14

Short summary

A developer shares a practical dev log covering layered upgrades of two Laravel apps from an old in-house skeleton, security-header middleware with sensible defaults, and a retention purge command that refuses to delete append-only audit trails. Also covers a reconciler pattern for lost job dispatches and a QR-code redirect with graceful fallback. The recurring theme: defaults and fallbacks that prevent 2am pages.

• •Layered migration approach for legacy Laravel apps with independent rollback per layer
• •Security headers on by default with CSP env-flagged for local dev
• •Retention purge command with guard rails protecting audit trails

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