Thought You Were Productive Enough in Laravel? Try Laravel Boost

If you've ever used an AI agent in a Laravel project, you've probably experienced the "almost right" phenomenon. Your agent generates code that looks reasonable but skips writing tests, uses outdated features or ignores your project's conventions entirely. The problem is context. Your assistant doesn't know your app.

Laravel Boost is the official solution to that problem.

What Is Laravel Boost?

Laravel Boost is an official, free, open-source package maintained by Laravel that makes AI coding assistants dramatically better at working with your Laravel project. It does this by giving your AI agent real-time, structured access to your application, so it stops guessing.

At its core, Boost runs a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server inside your project. This is an open standard for AI-to-tool communication, and it exposes over 15 specialised tools that let your AI agent programmatically inspect and interact with your live application.

Boost is built on three pillars that work together:

The MCP Server

This provides tools for your AI to read your database schema, query your database, run Tinker, inspect routes, read configuration values, list Artisan commands, check browser logs, and review recent errors. Your AI can now look at your app rather than imagining what it might look like.

The Documentation API

This gives your agent access to over 17,000 pieces of vectorised Laravel ecosystem documentation — and crucially, it's version-specific. If you're running Inertia v2, the agent gets Inertia v2 docs, not v1. This alone eliminates a huge category of errors where the AI hallucinates APIs from the wrong version.

AI Guidelines

Curated instruction files maintained by the Laravel team that enforce framework conventions and best practices. They nudge the agent to do things it might otherwise skip, like writing feature tests for generated code, following your project's established patterns, or running linting.

Getting Started

Installation takes a couple of minutes.

Step 1: Install via Composer

Since Boost is a development tool, install it as a dev dependency:

composer require laravel/boost --dev

Step 2: Run the Installer

php artisan boost:install

The installer is interactive and smart. It auto-detects which IDEs and AI agents you have configured in your project and lets you choose which features to enable. It generates the appropriate configuration files for your setup, whether that's a CLAUDE.md for Claude Code, cursor rules for Cursor, Junie configuration for PhpStorm, or whatever else you're using.

Step 3: Connect Your Editor

The installer usually handles this for you, but if you need to set things up manually:

Cursor: Open the command palette (Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P), select "Open MCP Settings", and toggle on laravel-boost.

Claude Code: Support is typically enabled automatically after running boost:install.

PhpStorm (Junie): Press Shift twice to open the command palette, search "MCP Settings", check the box next to laravel-boost, and click Apply.

VS Code (GitHub Copilot): Open the command palette and navigate to the MCP settings to enable the Boost server.

Once connected, you're ready to go.

What Can You Actually Do With It?

Here are some practical ways Boost changes your workflow:

Ask about your own app

Try "What routes does this application have?" or "What Eloquent models are available?" The AI will use the application-info tool to give you real answers specific to your project.

Debug faster

Ask the agent to fix a white screen of death. It can fetch the last Laravel error, read recent browser logs, locate a typo, and propose a fix… all within the conversation.

Generate version-aware code

When you ask for a feature to be built, the agent can look up the correct API for your specific Laravel version and generate code that actually works.

Explore your database

The agent can inspect your schema, run queries, and use Tinker to create test fixtures or inspect model relationships… all as part of a natural conversation.

Get accurate documentation

The search docs tool queries versioned documentation that matches your installed packages, so you get guidance that's actually relevant.

Tips for Getting the Most Out of Boost

Keep your local environment healthy

Boost works by inspecting your running application, so the better your app builds and boots locally (with a working .env, database connection, and so on) the better results you'll get.

Use boost:update regularly

When you update your Composer dependencies, run php artisan boost:update to refresh Boost's guidelines and skills to match your current package versions. Use the --discover flag to pick up guidelines for any newly installed packages.

Write custom guidelines

You can add your own project-specific rules by placing .blade.php or .md files in your .ai/guidelines/directory. These are automatically included when you run boost:install and help the agent follow your team's conventions, not just Laravel's defaults.

Override built-in guidelines when needed

If Boost's default guidelines don't match how your team does things, you can override them by creating a custom guideline with a matching file path. For example, creating .ai/guidelines/inertia-react/2/forms.blade.php would replace Boost's built-in form guidance for Inertia React v2.

Install community skills

With the boost:add-skill command, you can pull in skills from the community:

php artisan boost:add-skill owner/repo

Skills are synced across all your configured agents automatically.

Mind your security

Boost gives the agent powerful capabilities. It can read files, run queries, and execute code. Keep the MCP server local to your development environment, use a read-only database user where possible, and never hand your agent production credentials.

Add generated files to .gitignore

The MCP configuration file (.mcp.json), guideline files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, etc.), and the boost.json configuration file are all regenerated by boost:install and boost:update, so there's no need to track them in version control.

Talk to your app, not about Laravel

The biggest mindset shift with Boost is moving from generic questions to project-specific ones. Try "Add a status column to the orders table" and let the agent inspect your existing schema before generating the migration.

The Bottom Line

Laravel Boost upgrades your AI agent. By solving the context problem, it bridges the gap between a general-purpose language model and an experienced Laravel developer who knows your codebase. Your agent will still be wrong sometimes, but with Boost providing real project context, versioned documentation, and framework conventions, the quality of generated code improves significantly.

It's free, open source, and takes two minutes to install. If you're building with Laravel and using any kind of AI coding tool, there's no reason not to give it a try!

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