Totally stuck: urgent Laravel debugging help for Eloquent?

i'm seriously stuck on a critical Laravel Eloquent issue and it's driving me nuts. been trying to fix this for hours and it's holding up a launch.

• The Core Problem: i have a Project model, a Task model, and User model. a project hasMany tasks, and a task belongsTo a user. i'm trying to fetch all projects with their tasks, and for each task, eager load the user. the issue is, when i try to filter projects based on a task's user status (e.g., active users only), the results are just inconsistent. sometimes it returns projects with no tasks, other times it returns all tasks regardless of user status, even when i use whereHas or with with closures. the data just isn't what i expect, and the query is taking forever too. it's causing a major performance bottleneck.
• Context & Setup: we're using Laravel 10, PHP 8.2, and MySQL 8.0. models are pretty standard: Project, Task, User. relationships are basic: Project hasMany Task, Task belongsTo User. no custom pivots or anything super complex, or so i thought.
• What I've Tried (and Failed):
  • Used dd() extensively on queries and results. spent hours with dd() on every single part of the query and the resulting collections. the raw SQL looks okay, but the Eloquent results are just wrong.
  • Checked Laravel logs and server error logs. nothing in the logs, no obvious errors from Laravel itself or the server.
  • Installed and used Laravel Debugbar, but no obvious red flags. debugbar just shows the query taking a long time, but doesn't point to why the data is incorrect or filtered improperly.
  • Rewrote the query using different Eloquent methods (e.g., with() vs. lazy loading, join() vs. relationships). i've tried every combination: with(), load(), whereHas(), even a straight join to see if it's an N+1 issue or something. still no dice.
  • Even tried raw SQL to see if it's an Eloquent abstraction issue. when i run the equivalent SQL query directly in phpmyadmin, it works perfectly. so it feels like it's something specific to how Laravel Eloquent is interpreting or executing it.
• Specific Questions/Help Needed:
  • is there some super obvious Eloquent pitfall i'm totally missing here with nested relationships and filtering?
  • has anyone run into weird Laravel 10 issues with complex Eloquent relationships that could cause this?
  • seriously, does anyone know of a reliable service or individual who offers urgent, paid Laravel debugging help? i just need someone to quickly pinpoint what the hell is going on, i'm happy to pay for a quick fix.
• Urgency: this is a total blocker for our product launch next week, so any fast help would be a lifesaver.

thanks in advance for any insights!