that is a valid point. dbslice finds cycles in the fk graph and usually resolves them by nulling a nullable fk for insert order, then patching it back with deferred updates after inserts. if a cycle has no nullable fks, postgres output can still work when deferred fk checking is enabled and the cycle constraints are deferrable, otherwise it fails fast with a clear error.

traversal automatically pulls in parent records so you don’t end up with dangling references, and a validator (enabled by default) can double-check the slice before output. for complex joins, you can opt into subqueries in seed where clauses.

it covers a lot of messy cases, but i won’t claim it’s fully solved yet. there’s no automatic discovery of relationships that only exist in app code (beyond heuristic hints), and real production schemas will still surface new edge cases. it’s still early-stage, so the more people test it on messy production-like datasets, the faster i can iron those out.

i would also love to hear what you think of the implementation if you check out the code.