Laravel Magazine
Using Claude Code to Supercharge Your Laravel Development Workflow
Using Claude Code to Supercharge Your Laravel Development Workflow
AI coding tools have graduated from "interesting toy" to "I actually ship faster with this." If you're a Laravel developer who hasn't invested time in setting up Claude Code properly, you're leaving a real productivity gain on the table.
The key word there is properly. Out of the box, Claude Code is impressive. With the right configuration for Laravel, it becomes something closer to a very capable senior dev sitting next to you who has read your entire codebase.
Here's how to get there.
1. Start With a Solid CLAUDE.md
Claude Code looks for a CLAUDE.md file in your project root to understand context. This is the single
most impactful thing you can add. Treat it like onboarding documentation for a developer who knows
Laravel but has never seen your specific project.
A good CLAUDE.md for a Laravel project might include:
# Project: MyApp
## Tech Stack
- Laravel 13, PHP 8.3
- MySQL 8.0 with Eloquent ORM
- Filament v3 for admin panel
- Livewire v3 for interactive components
- Pest for testing (no PHPUnit directly)
- Laravel Pint for code style (run before committing)
## Architecture Notes
- Controllers are thin. Business logic lives in Action classes under app/Actions/
- All models use UUIDs as primary keys
- Feature tests live in tests/Feature, organized by domain
## Commands to Know
- `./vendor/bin/pest` - run the test suite
- `./vendor/bin/pint` - fix code style
- `php artisan migrate:fresh --seed` - reset the database
The more context you give it, the more idiomatic its output will be.
2. Install Laravel Boost
Laravel Boost is an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server built into Laravel that gives AI agents direct access to your application's internals. It ships with over 15 specialized tools and a knowledge base containing more than 17,000 pieces of Laravel-specific knowledge.
Install it via Composer:
composer require laravel/boost --dev
Then add it to your Claude Code MCP configuration. Once connected, Claude Code can introspect your routes, models, migrations, and config directly rather than relying purely on what it can read from files.
Teams using Laravel Boost report 40-60% reductions in time spent on CRUD scaffolding after investing about 30 minutes on the initial setup.
3. Hook Up Pint and Pest Automatically
Claude Code supports hooks that run before and after certain actions. The most useful setup for Laravel is running Pint and your test suite before every commit -- automatically, right inside the Claude Code session.
Add this to your Claude Code settings:
{
"hooks": {
"PreToolUse": [
{
"matcher": "Bash",
"hooks": [
{
"type": "command",
"command": "./vendor/bin/pint --dirty && ./vendor/bin/pest --parallel"
}
]
}
]
}
}
This blocks the commit if Pint finds style violations or any tests fail. You catch problems the moment they're introduced, not when a CI pipeline flags them 10 minutes later.
4. Use It Agentically, Not Just Generatively
The biggest mistake developers make with Claude Code is treating it like a fancy autocomplete. The real power is in agentic use -- giving it a task and letting it execute across multiple files, running tests, reading errors, and iterating.
Instead of:
"Write me a controller for users"
Try:
"Create a UserController with index, show, store, update, and destroy methods. Use the UserService class in app/Services/ for business logic. Add form request classes for store and update. Write feature tests for all five endpoints using Pest. Run the tests and fix anything that fails."
That's a task, not a prompt. Claude Code will work through it, run the tests, read the failures, and fix them -- often without you needing to intervene.
5. Explore Laravel Skills
In February 2026, Laravel launched an open directory of reusable AI agent skills for Laravel and PHP developers at skills.laravel.cloud. These are pre-built skill packages you can drop into your Claude Code setup to give it domain-specific knowledge and workflows.
Examples include skills for generating Filament resources, writing Pest tests from spec docs, scaffolding Livewire components to your team's conventions, and more. The directory is community-maintained and growing fast.
6. Tell It to Be Critical, Not Agreeable
By default, AI tools have a bias toward agreement. You don't want that in a coding assistant. Add a
directive to your CLAUDE.md (or your global Claude Code config) to push back:
## AI Behavior
- Be critical. If my approach has a better alternative, say so.
- Do not write code just to please me. If something is wrong, flag it.
- Follow Spatie PHP guidelines: https://spatie.be/guidelines/code-style
- Never use `dd()` or `var_dump()` in generated code.
This small addition changes the quality of suggestions dramatically. You want a collaborator, not a yes-machine.
Wrapping Up
The developers getting the most out of Claude Code for Laravel aren't the ones prompting the hardest.
They're the ones who set up the context well: a detailed CLAUDE.md, Laravel Boost connected, hooks
running Pint and tests automatically, and a habit of giving it full tasks rather than isolated snippets.
Invest 30 minutes in the setup. It pays back in the first week.
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