README

Laravel Starter Kit

Official Laravel starter kit with strict type-safety and code quality tools for Laravolt in Agentic era.

Note: This starter kit comes with Laravolt Platform (7.x) pre-installed. The setup process automatically configures all necessary migrations and assets.

Why This Starter Kit?

Modern PHP has evolved into a mature, type-safe language, yet many Laravel projects still operate with loose conventions and optional typing. This starter kit changes that paradigm by enforcing:

100% Type Coverage: Every method, property, and parameter is explicitly typed
Zero Tolerance for Code Smells: Rector and PHPStan at maximum strictness catch issues before they become bugs
Immutable-First Architecture: Data structures favor immutability to prevent unexpected mutations
Fail-Fast Philosophy: Errors are caught at compile-time, not runtime
Automated Code Quality: Pre-configured tools ensure consistent, pristine code across your entire team
Just Better Laravel Defaults: Thanks to Essentials / strict models, auto eager loading, immutable dates, and more...

This isn't just another Laravel boilerplate—it's a statement that PHP applications can and should be built with the same rigor as strongly-typed languages like Rust or TypeScript.

Getting Started

Requires PHP 8.4+ and a database supported by Laravel 13. The default .env.example is ready for SQLite.

Create a New App

Create your type-safe Laravel 13 + Laravolt 7 application using Composer:

Maintenance note: until the first Laravolt 7 beta tag is published, this starter pins laravolt/laravolt to dev-master as 7.0.0-beta.1. Switch it to ^7.0@beta after the beta release is tagged.

composer create-project laravolt/laravel-starter-kit --prefer-dist example-app
cd example-app
composer dev

create-project already copies .env, generates the app key, prepares SQLite, runs laravolt:install, and migrates the database.

Setup an Existing Clone

Use this path only when you clone the repository manually instead of using create-project:

git clone https://github.com/laravolt/laravel-starter-kit example-app
cd example-app
composer setup
composer dev

composer setup installs Composer and Bun dependencies, publishes Laravolt, runs migrations, and builds assets.

Optional: Browser Testing Setup

If you plan to use Pest's browser testing capabilities:

bun add playwright
bunx playwright install

Laravolt Assets

If Laravolt UI assets look stale after an update, refresh the symlinks/assets:

php artisan laravolt:link
bun run build

Verify Installation

Run the test suite to ensure everything is configured correctly:

composer test

You should see all default quality checks passing. The starter kit intentionally ships with strict Pest Arch, type coverage, Pint, Rector, and PHPStan gates so a fresh app starts green.

Coverage and browser tests are available as explicit opt-in gates:

composer test:coverage  # requires a PHP coverage driver such as Xdebug/PCOV
composer test:browser   # requires bunx playwright install

Available Tooling

Development

composer dev - Starts Laravel server, queue worker, log monitoring, and Vite dev server concurrently

Code Quality

composer lint - Runs Rector (refactoring), Pint (PHP formatting), and Prettier (JS/TS formatting)
composer test:lint - Dry-run mode for CI/CD pipelines

Testing

composer test:type-coverage - Ensures 100% type coverage with Pest
composer test:types - Runs PHPStan at level 9 (maximum strictness)
composer test:unit - Runs Pest tests with 100% code coverage requirement
composer test - Runs the complete test suite (type coverage, unit tests, linting, static analysis)

Maintenance

composer update:requirements - Updates all PHP and NPM dependencies to latest versions

Based on the original work by Nuno Maduro.

laravolt / laravel-starter-kit

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