Laravel Quickstart Laravel Package

Product Decisions This Supports

• Standardizing the baseline for all new Laravel services. This is an opinionated project scaffold (Pint rules, Rector config, Pest 5 test harness, Prettier/Tailwind tooling), not a runtime library. Adopting 5.0 makes it the default starting point for greenfield repos and the reference for "what good looks like" in code review.
• Timing the PHP 8.4 / Laravel 13 platform upgrade. 5.0 hard-requires boost-webminty-guidelines ^4.0 (PHP 8.4+, Laravel 13+). That makes this release the practical signal that the platform floor has moved — roadmap work should schedule the framework upgrade for existing apps in the same window, or explicitly defer new-repo adoption until it lands.
• Testing strategy: E2E is now the default, not an opt-in. Pest 5 plus pest-plugin-browser/Playwright, a tests/Browser suite bound to the app test case, and git-ignored screenshots means every downstream project inherits browser tests. This drives CI runtime and runner-image decisions, flake budget, and who owns browser-test authoring (previously a per-project choice).
• Code-design philosophy: openness over closure. Dropping final from all classes and from the Pint rules reverses a prior stance. That affects mocking/subclassing patterns, extension points, and how strictly we enforce class-closure rules in review — a decision worth recording rather than letting it drift per team.
• Developer tooling and AI-assisted workflow. Eight Claude Code agents (reviewers, test/browser-test writers and runners, docs keeper) plus documented standards in the README turn "how we use AI on this codebase" from ad hoc to a shipped, versioned convention. Relevant to onboarding cost, review throughput, and any AI-tooling policy we need to publish.
• Build vs. buy for project bootstrap. Maintaining our own skeleton is now a realistic alternative only if we intend to diverge from PHP 8.4/Laravel 13 and Pest 5; otherwise this consolidates that maintenance into one upstream.

When to Consider This Package

Adopt when:

• You run more than one Laravel app, or expect to, and want new repos to start identical rather than "identical-ish."
• You are already on, or committed to, PHP 8.4+ and Laravel 13+ — 5.0 is a hard gate; there is no supported 4.x path for older stacks.
• You want browser/E2E coverage and Playwright available with zero setup, and CI can absorb the added runtime.
• Your team is comfortable with opinionated tooling (Pint, Rector, strict type coverage) and with the Claude Code agent convention being part of the repo.

Look elsewhere or stay on 4.0.2 when:

• You are on PHP 8.3 or Laravel 11/12, or your platform upgrade is not funded this cycle. This is a breaking major: adopting it forces the framework and Pest 4→5 test migration on every downstream project at once.
• You need a minimal-dependency skeleton, or you deliberately keep the test suite unit/feature-only and do not want a browser runner in the toolchain.
• You rely on final classes for API-closure guarantees or static-analysis strictness — dropping final is a deliberate reversal, and re-adding it locally puts you off the shared standard.
• You need a package with a consumer support contract. This is an internal-style template; semver here tracks the toolchain, not a compatibility promise for embedders.
• The team has no plans to use the AI agents — a large part of 5.0's value is then unused, though harmless.

How to Pitch It (Stakeholders)

For executives: This is a one-time baseline update to our Laravel project template. It moves us onto current PHP 8.4 and Laravel 13, bundles testing and code-style standards so new services start consistent instead of each team reinventing setup, and adds browser-level testing and AI-assisted review agents out of the box. Cost is a coordinated upgrade sprint for existing apps rather than a licensing or vendor cost; the main risk is cadence — the template now moves with the framework, so we should expect a breaking major roughly on Laravel's release rhythm and budget for it. The payoff is less setup drift, faster onboarding, and a single place to change standards.

For engineering: 5.0 is a breaking release. Pest 5.3 and the faker/Laravel/type-coverage plugins move to 5.x, so existing suites need a Pest 4→5 pass. final is gone from Pint rules and from all classes — expect that to change mocking and extension patterns. rector.php was crashing on an unknown strictBooleans option, which is now fixed, along with Rector's #[Fillable]/#[Hidden] attributes being applied. New: the Pest browser plugin with Playwright, tests/Browser wired to the app test case, screenshots git-ignored, and eight Claude Code agents for review, test and browser-test authoring/running, and docs. concurrently is on 10 and prettier-plugin-tailwindcss on 0.8; the README now documents Laravel 13, the standards, the browser plugin, and the agents. Plan the upgrade as: bump the template → run the Laravel 13 upgrade → migrate the Pest suite → wire Playwright into CI → re-baseline formatting.