What is Feature tests in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application?

What is Feature tests in Laravel, and what role does it play in a real application? In Laravel, feature tests should be understood as part of a larger application architecture rather than as an isolated API call. Feature tests exercise larger application flows such as HTTP requests, authentication and database behavior. A strong understanding includes its purpose, the layer where it belongs, the data or request flow it affects, and the situations where another mechanism may be more appropriate. Practical context: Laravel provides testing support for unit and feature tests so teams can verify business rules and application behavior automatically. The specific focus here is feature tests: Feature tests exercise larger application flows such as HTTP requests, authentication and database behavior. This question is designed to test not only terminology, but also how the concept fits into Laravel's request, application, database, security, or deployment workflow.