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Ui Designer Laravel Package
symfinity/ui-designer
Symfinity UI Designer is a Laravel package for visually building, customizing, and managing interface components and layouts, giving PHP developers a flexible backend for rapid UI configuration and admin panel development.
Dev-only DTCG theme designer for UI Kernel
Frequently asked questions about Ui Designer
- What is symfinity/ui-designer and what does it actually do?
- It is a Laravel package that provides a visual designer for DTCG (Design Tokens Community Group) themes, built to work with UI Kernel. The overview describes it as dev-only, which means it is intended for local development and authoring workflows rather than for shipping editor routes to production. The published release metadata at v0.1.0 does not include a detailed feature list, so confirm the exact scope in a sandbox before you plan around it.
- How do I install symfinity/ui-designer in a Laravel app?
- Install it with Composer the usual way: composer require symfinity/ui-designer --dev. The --dev flag matches the package's stated dev-only purpose and keeps it out of production installs. Laravel packages of this shape normally register through extra.laravel auto-discovery and expose config via a publish command, but the specifics are not documented in the release notes, so verify what it registers after installing.
- Which Laravel and PHP versions does it support?
- A supported version matrix is not published in the release metadata, so treat compatibility as unverified. Read the constraints in the package's own composer.json and compare them against your runtime before sequencing any work. If your Laravel major or PHP minor falls outside those constraints, that is a stop condition rather than something to discover later in QA.
- What is DTCG and what token format does the designer produce?
- DTCG refers to the Design Tokens Community Group, whose specification defines an interoperable JSON format for design tokens such as colors, spacing, and typography. A DTCG theme designer edits those token sets visually and emits them in that format so downstream tooling can consume them. The exact output paths and any export options are not described in the release notes, so inspect the generated files during your spike.
- Do I need UI Kernel installed for this package to work?
- The description explicitly names UI Kernel as the target, so it is reasonable to assume the designer authors themes for that system rather than standalone stylesheets. Whether UI Kernel is a hard Composer dependency or an optional companion is not stated in the release metadata. Check the require block in composer.json before assuming the designer works without it.
- Does symfinity/ui-designer persist data to the database?
- This is undocumented at v0.1.0 and is one of the most important things to confirm before adopting. A theme designer may write token files to disk, store overrides in a table, or operate purely in memory during a dev session. If it does ship migrations, treat them as vendor-owned, never edit them in place, and make sure you understand the export path for anything persisted.
- Is it safe to run symfinity/ui-designer in production?
- The package describes itself as dev-only, so the safe default is to require it with --dev and never expose its designer route on a production host. A UI designer typically registers an editor route and front-end assets, which are meaningful attack surface if they are reachable publicly. Gate the service provider behind an environment check or a feature flag rather than relying on routing luck.
- How do I publish the config and assets?
- Most Laravel packages expose php artisan vendor:publish with a tagged provider for config, views, and assets, but this package's tags are not documented. Run php artisan vendor:publish and inspect the available options, then commit whatever it emits to version control so your setup is reproducible. Keeping published files in the repo also makes upgrades reviewable as diffs.
- How should I test and isolate this package in my Laravel app?
- Wrap any calls into a thin internal adapter and keep its config and published assets in version control, so removal means deleting the adapter rather than untangling your domain code. Budget a one to two day spike in disposable branch to install it, publish, and observe exactly which routes, middleware, migrations, and assets it registers. Test coverage, static analysis level, and security disclosure process are not published, so do not assume quality from the artifact.
- Should I adopt symfinity/ui-designer at v0.1.0, and what are the risks?
- At a first 0.x tagged release with changelog-only notes, there is no stability guarantee and minor bumps may break, so treat adoption as a candidate evaluation rather than a decision. The main risks are information asymmetry about features and quality, single-vendor maintainer sustainability, and the blast radius of shipping editor assets and routes. Because it is a dev-only authoring tool, the pragmatic approach is to trial it in a sandbox and keep it out of production dependencies entirely.
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