A production-only 500 can come from a development helper in a Blade view
An admin form works locally and returns 500 after deployment with composer install --no-dev. The template may be calling a helper supplied only by a development dependency. A placeholder should not require Faker to render a production form.
Remove the runtime dependency from presentation
<input name="title" placeholder="Enter a title">
Use a clear static placeholder or a real application value. Keep fake data generation in factories, seeders, and tests that intentionally use it. Installing every development package on production merely to render a placeholder hides the dependency mistake.
Reproduce the deployment environment
Test a clean no-dev dependency installation in an isolated release directory. Compile views and exercise the authenticated create/edit routes that users actually open. A successful homepage request does not cover an admin template that only renders after login.
Read the exception class and view path from private logs. Avoid turning on public debug output to expose the entire stack and environment to visitors. The smallest useful fix often follows directly from the named undefined function or missing class.
Add a regression check for the affected route and inspect similar templates for the same helper. Preserve unrelated authentication behavior while repairing the form. Finally, rebuild the production view cache so the running release uses the corrected template. Record whether the fix was checked locally, under no-dev rendering, and through the live application; those are separate pieces of evidence.