What i do is clone an old project up to the commit where i've done authentication, setup forms the dashboard and most of the basic application framework. Then continue to the new repo from it.

laravel spark is designed for this: https://spark.laravel.com

I have not used it but have been looking into it lately

Is the included Laravel Auth package not good enough for basic login / authentication? Just run the artisan commands to enable Authentication and run the migrations and you're pretty much good to go

php artisan make:auth

php artisan migrate

After a new install, and configuring my env file, I usually use this to scaffold authentication and update the generated views.

Then later, if I have time and there is budget, I'll add a little interface for user management.