Protecting Your Code in Laravel Maestro: Why Upstream Architecture Matters

Laravel Maestro's upstream-downstream separation is designed to keep shared fixes synchronized across multiple starter kits—but it's a common source of confusion that leads developers to commit changes in the wrong location and lose their work. This guide clarifies the source-of-truth principle and explains why the kits/ directory must be authoritative while build/ serves only as a temporary working space. By understanding these architectural constraints, teams can contribute with confidence and avoid costly rollbacks across React, Vue, and Svelte starter kit variants.