Founder Laravel Package

Getting Started

Founder is not a library you composer require into an existing app — it is a project skeleton (composer create-project dyrynda/founder my-app). You adopt it exactly once, at project birth, and from that moment it is your codebase.

Minimal steps:

composer create-project dyrynda/founder my-app
cd my-app
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate
# configure DB + Redis (Horizon/Telescope assume Redis by default)
php artisan migrate --seed
npm ci && npm run dev
php artisan serve

Where to look first, in order:

1. composer.json — this is the real feature manifest. Read require and require-dev to see which opinionated extras (Horizon, Telescope, Sanctum, Debugbar, IDE Helper, Larastan, Pint/CS-Fixer, etc.) are pre-wired.
2. README.md — setup caveats specific to the skeleton.
3. .env.example — the config surface you must actually fill in.
4. app/Providers/ and config/ — where the starter's opinions live.
5. routes/ and .github/workflows/ — routing shape and pre-baked CI.

First use case: spin up a new API or SPA with auth, queues, and observability already configured, then delete everything you don't need before writing feature one.

Implementation Patterns

• Template-as-remote. Keep the upstream as a second git remote and cherry-pick useful config/CI commits later:

  git remote add upstream https://github.com/michaeldyrynda/founder.git
  git fetch upstream
  git cherry-pick <sha>   # never a merge after your first feature commit
  

• Scaffold-then-strip. Immediately after create-project, remove unused stacks (e.g. Horizon/Telescope if you're on sync/database, or the frontend build if the app is API-only). Dead starter code rots faster than code you wrote.
• Local observability loop. Telescope for request/query/job inspection, Horizon for queue dashboards. Restrict both to local in their service providers and use them as your primary debugging surface instead of dd().
• Auth via Sanctum. The skeleton typically ships Sanctum stateful config; add API tokens or SPA cookie auth on top rather than bolting on a new auth package. Social providers go in config/services.php.
• Quality gates in CI. Larastan + Pint/PHP-CS-Fixer + IDE Helper are pre-configured; wire them into the workflow so every PR runs the same static analysis as local dev.
• Queue pattern. Dispatch jobs, watch them in Horizon, tune config/horizon.php supervisors per environment (web vs. worker pools).
• Environment guards. Treat TELESCOPE_ENABLED, APP_DEBUG, and Horizon's environments array as the first things you audit before any deploy.
• Team fork pattern. If multiple projects use Founder, fork it once, apply your house opinions (PHP version, CI, strict types), then create-project from your fork.

Gotchas and Tips

• There is no composer update dyrynda/founder. The package version is irrelevant after scaffolding. Framework upgrades are ordinary Laravel upgrades.
• Stale baseline. Last release was 2022-06, so it targets the Laravel 9 / PHP 8.x era. Before serious work, run composer update, bump PHP, and walk the Laravel upgrade guide — or use Founder purely as reference architecture instead of a starting point.
• Redis is assumed. Horizon and Telescope default to a Redis connection. On database or sync, disable or remove them; otherwise you get confusing boot-time or dispatch failures.
• Provider registration. Check TelescopeServiceProvider / HorizonServiceProvider — if they register unconditionally, guard with $this->app->environment('local').
• Dev-only packages leaking to prod. Verify Debugbar, IDE Helper, and friends are in require-dev, and that production builds run composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader.
• Sanctum 419s. SPA auth silently fails if SANCTUM_STATEFUL_DOMAINS doesn't match your dev host and port (e.g. localhost:8000).
• Node/Tailwind drift. Old Tailwind/PostCSS configs break on newer Node. Pin a Node version via .nvmrc and in CI.
• Don't blind-merge upstream. After your first feature commit, upstream merges conflict everywhere. Cherry-pick config/CI commits instead.
• No plugin API. The "extension points" are just Laravel's: service providers, config/*, events, and your own app/ namespace. There is nothing Founder-specific to hook into.
• Deleting is the workflow. Every unused piece of the starter (Horizon, Telescope, Sanctum, the frontend build) is opt-in — remove it at scaffold time, not six months in.