Dev Environments vs Real-World Testing — A Developer Dilemma

[NiyonAlex]

Is this related to a new or existing framework?

Next.js

Is this related to a new or existing API?

GraphQL API

Is this related to another service?

DynamoDB, S3

Describe the feature you'd like to request

I’ve been deep in the weeds with AWS Amplify lately, and while it's great for rapidly spinning up full-stack apps, I'm hitting a wall with something many teams might relate to:

➡️ Local and PR environments often feel disconnected from reality.

You can easily spin up isolated backends per branch, but if there's no data seeded—or worse, no way to mirror production data (even partially)—it becomes really hard to test anything meaningful. Especially when your frontend depends heavily on real-world structure, edge cases, or relationships between entities.

Things I’m exploring:

How to sync masked or seeded datasets into preview environments

Automating testable backend environments per PR

Whether Amplify’s current architecture supports this well—or if it’s worth rebuilding with more flexible infra like SST or CDK

Curious how other teams handle this—especially those doing schema-first development with GraphQL and DynamoDB.

How do you mirror production-like data in your dev workflows?

Describe the solution you'd like

N/A

Describe alternatives you've considered

N/A

Additional context

No response

Is this something that you'd be interested in working on?

• [ ] 👋 I may be able to implement this feature request
• [ ] ⚠️ This feature might incur a breaking change