Laravel Sail Starter Kit Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Greenfield project scaffolding: This package is a starter kit, not a runtime dependency — the decision it informs is "what do we bootstrap new Laravel admin apps from?" Rather than a build-vs-buy question, it's a "standardize vs. hand-roll" question for the first sprint of every new internal tool.
• Admin panel platform choice: v1.2 moves to Filament v5 and Livewire 4. That is a major-version alignment, which makes this release the reference implementation for "do we commit to Filament as our admin UI layer for the next 12–18 months?" Any roadmap item involving CRUD back-offices, internal ops tooling, or customer dashboards built on Laravel should be re-costed against this baseline.
• Ecosystem currency as a roadmap signal: Filament v5 + Livewire 4 sets the floor for PHP/Laravel version support and front-end tooling (Vite/Tailwind/Prettier) in everything we scaffold from here. It effectively pins our "supported stack" definition for the next planning cycle.
• Reduced time-to-first-feature: A Sail-based starter kit means containerized local dev, debug tooling, and an admin panel are pre-wired. The PM-relevant metric is lead time from "approved" to "demoable," not lines of code.
• Portfolio rationalization: Teams running older Filament v3/v4 admin apps now have a concrete upgrade target. This is an input into a "consolidate admin tooling" initiative versus letting each squad maintain its own scaffold.

When to Consider This Package

Consider it when:

• You are starting a new Laravel application and expect to need an admin/back-office surface — adopting this avoids a week of setup and dependency-decision bikeshedding.
• Your organization has standardized on, or is seriously evaluating, Filament as the admin layer. The starter kit is essentially a curated, opinionated reference config.
• You want Docker-based local development (Sail) with debug tooling in a consistent, reproducible setup across engineers.
• You need an upgrade reference for moving an existing Filament v3/v4 app to v5 and Livewire 3→4 — the diff in this release is a working example of that migration target state.

Look elsewhere when:

• You are not building a Filament admin panel — the opinionated dependencies become dead weight you'll strip out.
• You need an unopinionated or minimal Laravel skeleton, or you use a different local dev approach (Herd, Valet, DDEV) — Sail and its Docker assumptions are baked in.
• You require long-term support guarantees or vendor SLAs. This is a community starter kit maintained by a small team; dependency bumps in v1.2 are bot-driven. It is a starting point you fork, not a dependency you track.
• You are on a legacy Laravel/PHP version incompatible with Filament v5's requirements — adopting now means a framework upgrade you may not have budgeted.

Because this is a template, "adoption" means fork and own it. Budget for that ownership explicitly; upstream releases like v1.2 are best treated as migration guidance, not as a changelog you must merge.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: This release is a maintenance-plus-platform-alignment update to an internal project template we can use to spin up Laravel admin applications. The headline is that it now targets the current generation of the Filament admin framework and Livewire front-end library — meaning anything we start from it will be on a supported stack rather than needing an upgrade within months. The business value is speed to first working demo and reduced tooling drift across teams, not new end-user functionality. There is no customer-facing change and no purchase decision attached.

For engineering: v1.2 is primarily automated dependency maintenance, with one substantive change: feat: upgrade to filament v5 and livewire 4. Treat this as a major version bump with breaking-change implications — Filament v5 and Livewire 4 introduce API and behavior changes relative to their predecessors, so:

• Do not merge upstream into existing forks blindly; diff against your scaffold before pulling the dependency set.
• Use this release as the canonical target state if you are planning a Filament v3/v4 → v5 migration; budget real effort for the Livewire 3 → 4 changes, not just a composer update.
• Note secondary bumps worth reviewing — notably barryvdh/laravel-debugbar 3.x → 4.x, which is also a major version and is dev-only, plus routine Prettier and GitHub Actions updates.
• The volume of Dependabot PRs indicates the maintainers rely on automated updates; pin your own versions after forking rather than tracking upstream loosely.

Net PM recommendation: Adopt as the default starting point for new Filament-based Laravel admin apps and as the reference target for the v5 upgrade. Do not treat it as a tracked dependency, and do not assume v1.2 is drop-in safe for existing projects — validate against a spike branch first. The absence of new product features means no roadmap reprioritization is warranted, but the framework alignment is a useful forcing function to schedule the Filament v5 upgrade work we've been deferring.