Developer upgrades two Laravel apps in layers, adds security headers and job reconciler

A developer documented a week of backend work that included migrating two Laravel applications off an outdated internal skeleton by applying changes in six discrete, independently revertable layers rather than a single large commit. Security response headers — including X-Frame-Options, Referrer-Policy, and HSTS in production — were added as a global middleware default rather than per-route decisions. A data retention purge command was built with explicit guard rails to prevent accidental deletion from high-risk tables. A queued-job reconciler was shipped to catch jobs that were queued but never executed. The week also included a custom 404 page and a QR-code redirect with a safe fallback URL, reinforcing an overarching theme of sensible defaults that reduce the risk of late-night incidents.