#Repositories vs No Repositories
I always thought decoupling is a good thing but there are cases where you think you are decoupling when in fact, you are just adding a new layer to the coupled code.
Let's see an example, say you have a typical CRUD application, a blog (simple example, applies even more to more complex cases). You have Posts, Categories, and Tags let's say. With eloquent it's pretty easy to set the relations up and use them.
You want to be proficient with your code, and you create a PostRepository interface and others (Tag / Category). Then you proceed to create an concrete implementation for Eloquent, and you just "map" those common methods to eloquent.