An automated test mitigates the risk you describe, and is well worth the tradeoff for fast startup. I don't consider startup time "superficial" at all; I work

An automated test mitigates the risk you describe, and is well worth the tradeoff for fast startup. I don't consider startup time "superficial" at all; I work in a Django monolith where this problem resulted in each and every management command, test invokation, and container reload incurring a 10-15sec penalty because of just a handful of heavy-to-import libraries used by certain tasks/views. Deferring these made a massive difference.