Your project has 200 Cucumber scenarios. 80% of them require login. How do you avoid repeating login steps in every Background?

-- Repeated in 160 feature files = maintenance nightmare
Background:
  Given the user opens the browser
  And navigates to the login page
  And enters username "admin@test.com"
  And enters password "Admin@123"
  And clicks Login
  And waits for dashboard to load

// Hooks.java
@Before("@needs-login")
public void loginViaApi() {
    // 1. Get session token via REST API (< 200ms)
    Response resp = given()
        .body(Map.of("email", "admin@test.com", "password", "Admin@123"))
        .post(ConfigReader.getApiUrl() + "/auth/login");

    String sessionToken = resp.jsonPath().getString("token");
    String sessionCookie = resp.jsonPath().getString("sessionId");

    // 2. Open browser to the domain (needed to set cookies)
    ctx.driver.get(ConfigReader.getBaseUrl());

    // 3. Inject session cookie — browser now thinks user is logged in
    ctx.driver.manage().addCookie(
        new Cookie("SESSION", sessionCookie,
            ".example.com", "/", null, false, true));

    // 4. Navigate directly to the page under test
    // No login page visited — user is already authenticated
}

@Before(order = 50)  // runs before @needs-login hook
public void setUp() {
    ctx.driver = DriverFactory.createDriver("chrome", false);
    ctx.driver.manage().window().maximize();
}

@regression @needs-login
Feature: Product Catalog

  -- No Background needed for login!

  Scenario: Search for laptop
    Given the user is on the product catalog page
    When the user searches for "laptop"
    Then the search results should appear

  Scenario: Filter by category
    Given the user is on the product catalog page
    When the user filters by "Electronics"
    Then only electronics products should show

@regression @no-login
Feature: Public Landing Page

  Scenario: View hero banner
    Given the user navigates to the home page
    Then the hero banner should be visible

// For cases where API login injection isn''t possible
public class LoginState {
    private static volatile boolean isLoggedIn = false;
    private static final Object lock = new Object();
}

@Before("@needs-login")
public synchronized void ensureLoggedIn() {
    if (!LoginState.isLoggedIn) {
        ctx.loginPage.login("admin@test.com", "Admin@123");
        LoginState.isLoggedIn = true;
    } else {
        // Reuse cookies from previous session
        ctx.driver.manage().addCookie(savedCookie);
    }
}

-- One-liner Background using a high-level step
Background:
  Given the user is logged in as "admin"

-- Step definition does API login + cookie injection
@Given("the user is logged in as {string}")
public void loginAs(String role) {
    cookieManager.injectSessionFor(role);  // encapsulated in utility
}