When do I need Laravel consulting versus development?

Pick consulting when you need a senior opinion before committing to a direction. Before a major refactor or rewrite. Before choosing between competing architectural approaches. Before signing a development contract with another agency you want to validate. Before a Series A or B funding round where investors will run technical due diligence. When your application has performance, security, or scaling issues that the current team cannot fully diagnose. Pick development when you have already made the decisions and you need engineers to ship code.