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Introduction

Laravel Boost is a package that accelerates AI-assisted development by supplying the guidelines and Agent Skills that AI agents need to write high-quality Laravel code following the framework’s best practices. Boost also provides a powerful Laravel ecosystem documentation API — a knowledge base containing over 17,000 Laravel-specific facts combined with semantic search via embeddings. Boost instructs AI agents such as Claude Code and Cursor to query this API to learn about the latest Laravel features and best practices.

Installation

Install Laravel Boost via Composer as a development dependency:
Then install the MCP server and coding guidelines:
The boost:install command generates relevant guidelines and skill files for the AI coding agent you select during installation. After installation, you can start coding with Cursor, Claude Code, or your preferred AI agent.
The generated MCP configuration file (.mcp.json), guideline files (CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md, junie/, etc.), and the boost.json configuration file may be added to your application’s .gitignore. These files are automatically regenerated when you run boost:install or boost:update.

Configuring your agent

  1. Open the Command Palette (Cmd+Shift+P or Ctrl+Shift+P)
  2. Select Open MCP Settings and press Enter
  3. Toggle laravel-boost on

Updating Boost resources

Keep your local Boost resources (AI guidelines and skills) up to date to reflect the latest versions of your installed Laravel ecosystem packages:
You can automate this by adding it to the post-update-cmd script in composer.json:
By default, boost:update only refreshes Boost resources that have already been published. Use --discover to detect newly installed packages and offer to publish their guidelines and skills:

MCP server

Laravel Boost ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes tools allowing AI agents to interact with your Laravel application — inspecting its structure, querying the database, and running code.

Available MCP tools

Registering the MCP server manually

Some editors require you to register the MCP server manually. Use the following details: JSON example:

AI guidelines

AI guidelines are instruction files that are preloaded to give AI agents important context about your Laravel ecosystem packages. They cover core conventions, best practices, and framework-specific patterns so agents consistently generate high-quality code.

Available guidelines

Boost includes AI guidelines for the following packages and frameworks. The core guideline provides general advice that applies regardless of version.
To keep AI guidelines current, see Updating Boost resources.

Adding custom guidelines

Add your own AI guidelines to Boost by placing .blade.php or .md files in the .ai/guidelines/* directory of your application. These files are merged with Boost’s built-in guidelines when you run boost:install.

Overriding Boost guidelines

Create a custom guideline at a path matching an existing Boost guideline to override it. When boost:install finds a matching path, it uses your custom version instead of the built-in one. For example, to override the “Inertia React v2 Form Guidance” guideline, create a file at .ai/guidelines/inertia-react/2/forms.blade.php.

Guidelines for third-party packages

If you maintain a third-party package and want Boost to include AI guidelines for it, add a resources/boost/guidelines/core.blade.php file to your package. Boost will automatically discover and load the guideline when users run php artisan boost:install. Guidelines should include a brief overview of the package, required file structures and conventions, and how to create or use the main features — with commands and code snippets. Keep them concise and action-oriented:

Agent Skills

Agent Skills are lightweight, focused knowledge modules that an agent can activate on demand when working in a specific domain. Unlike guidelines (which are always preloaded), skills are loaded only when relevant — keeping context lean and code quality high. When you run boost:install and select Skills as a feature, Boost automatically installs the appropriate skills based on the packages detected in composer.json. For example, if your project includes livewire/livewire, the livewire-development skill is installed automatically. Skills included with Boost, such as infer-conventions, are installed regardless of which packages you have.

Available skills

To keep skills current, see Updating Boost resources.

Creating custom skills

Add a SKILL.md file to .ai/skills/{skill-name}/ in your application. Running boost:update will install your custom skill alongside Boost’s built-in skills. For example, to create a skill for application-specific invoice logic:

Overriding built-in skills

Create a custom skill with the same name as a built-in Boost skill to override it. Boost will use your version instead of the default. For example, to override the livewire-development skill, create .ai/skills/livewire-development/SKILL.md.

Skills for third-party packages

If you maintain a third-party package, add resources/boost/skills/{skill-name}/SKILL.md to your package. Boost will offer to install the skill when users run php artisan boost:install. Skills follow the Agent Skills format — a folder containing a SKILL.md file with required YAML frontmatter (name and description) and Markdown instructions:

Guidelines vs Skills

Boost gives you two ways to provide context to AI agents: Both guidelines and skills describe the Laravel ecosystem. To capture the conventions of your own application, you should use project rules.

Project rules

While guidelines and skills teach agents how to write Laravel, project rules teach them how to write your application. A rule is anything you would otherwise need to explain again in every new session:
  • Decisions made along the way by you, your agents, or your teammates.
  • Style guidelines and preferences that are difficult to get an agent to follow.
  • Traps and constraints that cannot be inferred from the surrounding code.
Rules are stored as Markdown files within your application’s .ai/rules directory and should be committed to source control. Unlike an agent’s own memory, which is personal and session-scoped, your rules are shared with your team and with every agent that works on your application. Each rule file declares the file globs it applies to within its frontmatter:
Boost also maintains an .ai/rules/index.md file that maps globs to their rule files. Agents are instructed to consult this index before planning or editing any file, so a rule is only loaded when it is relevant:
Unlike the .mcp.json and generated guideline files, the .ai/rules directory should be committed to source control so that your rules are shared with your team.

Recording rules

To record a rule, you may simply ask your agent to remember it:
The agent invokes Boost’s record-rule MCP tool with a glob, a short title, and a note. Boost files the rule under the matching area, creating the rule file if needed, and updates the index. Always record rules using the record-rule tool rather than creating rule files by hand. Boost regenerates .ai/rules/index.md as part of recording a rule, and agents rely on that index to discover which rules apply to the file they are working on. A manually added rule file will not be discovered until the index is next regenerated.

Inferring your application’s conventions

Recording rules one at a time works well going forward; however, an existing application already contains years of conventions. The infer-conventions skill bootstraps your rules from the code you have already written. To get started, ask your agent to use the skill:
The skill sweeps your application across validation, controllers, authorization, models, architecture, testing, frontend, database, and console conventions, followed by an open-ended pass for patterns such as base classes, shared traits, and module layouts. The skill documents what your code actually does rather than what it should do. It records only well-supported, non-default conventions, skips framework defaults and anything Pint or Rector already enforces, and reports genuinely mixed patterns instead of recording them. Before writing rules, the skill presents each convention it discovered, along with its supporting evidence, for your approval. To record all discovered conventions without confirmation, tell it to “yolo”.

Disabling project rules

Project rules are enabled by default. To disable them entirely, define the following environment variable. This removes the record-rule MCP tool and stops Boost from managing the .ai/rules directory:

Documentation API

Boost’s documentation API gives AI agents access to a knowledge base of over 17,000 Laravel-specific facts. It uses semantic search with embeddings to return accurate, context-aware results. The Search Docs MCP tool lets agents query the Laravel hosted documentation API based on your installed packages. Boost’s AI guidelines and skills automatically instruct agents to use this API.

Extending Boost

Boost works out of the box with many popular IDEs and AI agents. If your coding tool is not yet supported, you can create a custom agent integration.

Adding support for another IDE or agent

Create a class that extends Laravel\Boost\Install\Agents\Agent and implement one or more of the following contracts:
  • Laravel\Boost\Contracts\SupportsGuidelines — add AI guideline support
  • Laravel\Boost\Contracts\SupportsMcp — add MCP support
  • Laravel\Boost\Contracts\SupportsSkills — add Agent Skills support
See ClaudeCode.php for a reference implementation.

Registering your agent

Register the custom agent in the boot method of App\Providers\AppServiceProvider:
Once registered, the agent appears as an option when running php artisan boost:install.
Last modified on August 5, 2026