How do you create the first admin user with privileges to create lesser users after deploying Laravel app in Cpanel?

Personally, I don’t like to have temporary users stored in the .env files or (god forbid) directly in the Seeder.

I have a standard issue user-creation Artisan command that I run from the command line. Note that I also use a mutator on the User model which hashes password by default (see bottom of answer).

<?php

namespace AppConsoleCommands;

use AppModelsUser;
use AppModelsCompany;
use IlluminateConsoleCommand;

class CreateUser extends Command
{
    /**
     * The name and signature of the console command.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $signature = 'app:create-user';

    /**
     * The console command description.
     *
     * @var string
     */
    protected $description = 'Create a new user';

    /**
     * Execute the console command.
     */
    public function handle(): void
    {
        $email = $this->ask("What's the user's email address?");
        $first_name = $this->ask("What's the user's first name?");
        $last_name = $this->ask("What's the user's last name?");
        $password = $this->secret("What's the user's password?");

        if (User::firstWhere('email', $email)) {
            $this->error('User already exists with that email address!');
            exit;
        }

        $user = User::create([
            'email' => $email,
            'first_name' => $first_name,
            'last_name' => $last_name,
            'password' => $password
        ]);

        $user->assignRole('super-admin');

        $this->info("New user with email address '$email' was successfully created");
    }
}

AppModelsUser

<?php

use IlluminateDatabaseEloquentCastsAttribute;
use IlluminateFoundationAuthUser as Authenticatable;

class User extends Authenticable
{
    protected function password(): Attribute
    {
        return Attribute::make(
            set: fn (string $value) => bcrypt($value)
        );
    }
}

Then you can just run:

php artisan app:create-user

from your command line and create your initial (or any subsequent) admins from there.