> Most integration tests are not thread safe and make assumptions about running against an empty database. Which if you think about it, is exactly how no user except your first user will ever use your system.

Yea, cypress has this in their anti-patterns:

https://docs.cypress.io/app/core-concepts/best-practices#Usi...

Dangling state is useful for debugging when the test fails, you don't want to clean that up.

This has been super useful practice in my experience. I really like to be able to run tests regardless of my application state. It's faster and over time it helps you hit and fixup various issues that you only encounter after you fill the database with enough data.