- How do I install cortex/tags in a Laravel application?
- Install it with Composer using composer require cortex/tags, then publish the package configuration and migrations. Register the Cortex Tags service provider and add the taggable trait to the Eloquent models you want to tag. Because the package is archived, check the required Laravel and PHP versions before running it in a new project.
- Which Laravel versions does cortex/tags support?
- cortex/tags follows older Laravel conventions, roughly the Laravel 5.6 through 8.x era, and newer major versions should be treated as unvalidated. The repository is explicitly archived, so there is no expected maintainer path for Laravel 9, 10, 11, or later support. If you need a current Laravel version, plan to fork and test the service provider and dependency constraints yourself.
- How do I make an Eloquent model taggable with cortex/tags?
- Add the package's taggable trait to the model you want to tag, after installing and registering the package. The trait connects the model to the package's polymorphic tag storage, which is built on cortex/attributes. You should then use the package helpers or relationships to attach and manage tags on that model.
- What is the relationship between cortex/tags and cortex/attributes?
- cortex/tags is a thin, opinionated tagging layer over cortex/attributes, which supplies the polymorphic entity and attribute backbone. Tags are modeled as a specialized attribute type rather than a fully independent tags table design. That means adopting cortex/tags also means accepting the Cortex attributes schema and its model conventions.
- Can I use cortex/tags without adopting the full Cortex platform?
- Technically you can install the package on its own, but it expects Cortex contracts, repository patterns, configuration-heavy service providers, and cortex/attributes. For a single tagging feature, that is usually an awkward fit because you inherit a broader platform for a small domain problem. The real decision is whether to adopt the Cortex platform, not just whether to add tagging.
- How are tag slugs and translations handled in cortex/tags?
- The package advertises Sluggable and Translatable models out of the box, so tag names can be slugged and translated through those integrations. The hard cases are polymorphic, translatable, and sluggable interactions such as slug uniqueness across locales and fallback behavior. Because the package is unmaintained, those corner cases are unlikely to be hardened, so test them explicitly.
- Is cortex/tags maintained or archived?
- cortex/tags is explicitly flagged archived in the evaluation context, with no maintainer and no security response path. There is effectively no external usage signal, few stars, and zero dependents to validate upgrade paths. Treat it as a reference implementation or a self-supported fork, not a supported dependency.
- How do I query records tagged with a specific tag in cortex/tags?
- The package includes helpers for managing tags and querying tagged records, so you typically query through the taggable relationship or the package's tag query helpers. Because documentation is limited and the package is archived, confirm the exact method names and relationship behavior against the source code. Also check the generated schema, since tag storage is shared with cortex/attributes.
- What are the alternatives to cortex/tags for Laravel tagging?
- Spatie Laravel Tags is the common maintained alternative for a dedicated Laravel tagging package, and a custom tags/taggables schema is often enough for simpler needs. Moving from an existing Spatie-style implementation to cortex/tags is not a drop-in change because the storage model is polymorphic attributes. You would need a data migration or a dual-write period, which is usually more work than the tagging feature warrants.
- Is cortex/tags safe to use in production?
- An archived package rarely passes a modern dependency audit cleanly, and cortex/tags has no security response path. It also pulls in Sluggable and Translatable as hard requirements, creating a pinned, unmaintained dependency chain across several packages. If you adopt it, name an owner for the fork, vendor it, and test PHP and Laravel upgrades explicitly.