defmodule MyApp.Explore do
  defmacro __using__(_) do
    quote do
      alias App.Repo
      alias App.UserContext.User
      import Ecto.Query
    end
  end
end

and then you only need to call use MyApp.Explore whenever you need to do something with your data.

Don’t think it has anything to do with “Ecto efficiency”.

Automatically preloading association was one of the biggest source of performance issues in Rails with N+1 queries, I am really glad that Ecto does not do that by default, it forces you to understand what exactly your code needs (I love when libraries nudges you to good, explicit/obvious patterns).

Anyway, I do like User.find_by(email: "email") style of code (which you can also use Repo.get_by() btw, but I was missing it for context functions, so I created a small library here GitHub - edisonywh/condiment: 🍡 Add flavors to your context function without the hassles. · GitHub that helps make this easier.

EDIT: Like nobbz pointed out as well, you can define a .iex.exs file, on the app level or on the global level, and that saves you a lot of typing too.

Personally I’d evaluate the reasons for “hack(ing) in the console”. If you do the same thing over and over again it should have some proper API to call and if it’s different things all the time I’m wondering why those need to happen in the first place. For just looking at the db state I personally just use a GUI for the db.