When building a UI makes more sense than bloating your seeders
Update: 2025-08-30
Description
What do you do when you need to create some data but you haven't built out the UI for that data yet? A seeder is a great approach, but is it always the right one?
In the latest episode of the No Compromises podcast, we dive into a real project where starting with the most complex feature made test data management painful. Instead of exploding the complexity of our seeders, we built a minimal UI to manage test data.
We also talk about some other unexpected benefits, and talk through the trade-offs and why detours like this should feel uncomfortable (and be tightly scoped).
- (00:00 ) - Starting deep exposes messy user permutations
- (02:45 ) - Seeder explosion vs. a minimal UI
- (03:45 ) - Reframing the “detour” after using it
- (05:30 ) - Why the mini-UI helped: faster iteration, fewer seed resets
- (07:45 ) - Dogfooding + tester debugging benefits
- (08:00 ) - Guardrails: detours should feel uneasy and stay tight
- (09:00 ) - Silly bit
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