The big features got the coverage. These six didn’t. Each one is small. All of them are useful. You’ll use at least three of them this week. Every major Laravel release gets two articles: the launch day roundup covering the headline features, and then silence… Read More »Six Laravel 13 Quality-of-Life Changes Nobody Is Writing About.
PostgreSQL 17 and earlier would throw a syntax error on virtualAs(). PostgreSQL 18 — released September 2025 — finally supports it. Laravel’s support merged October 7. Here’s what virtual columns unlock, how they differ from stored, and every real-world pattern that benefits. For three years,… Read More »PostgreSQL 18 Adds Virtual Generated Columns to Laravel. Here’s Every Pattern Worth Knowing.
The big change: static guidelines that loaded everything all the time are replaced by on-demand Skills that load only what the current task needs. Plus 15 MCP tools, 17,000-document search API, and custom skill support. This is the most underwritten product in the Laravel ecosystem.… Read More »Laravel Boost 2.0 Ships Skills. AI Agents Now Understand Your Laravel App at a Package Level.
The –watch flag no longer needs Node.js or chokidar installed. FrankenPHP handles it natively in Go. Here’s what changed, why the old watcher was painful, and the full FrankenPHP + Octane setup for 2026. If you’ve ever tried to use octane:start –watch and been greeted… Read More »Octane Dropped Its Node.js Dependency. FrankenPHP’s Native File Watcher Just Made Local Development Cleaner.
–parallel makes Pint 40× faster on large codebases. –format agent gives Claude Code and OpenCode structured JSON instead of human-readable text. extend lets you share a base config across every project. Three upgrades, one composer update. Laravel Pint has always been the best argument for… Read More »Pint Now Runs in Parallel. Your Entire Codebase Formats in Seconds — and AI Agents Get Their Own Output Format.
defer(). Background HTTP Requests Have Never Been This Clean.Http::batch()->defer() fires after the response is sent. Your user is already on the next page. Here’s every pattern — batch, pool, defer, concurrent queue — and when to reach for each one. There’s a tax every web application pays when it calls external APIs. You… Read More »Laravel’s Http Client Got defer(). Background HTTP Requests Have Never Been This Clean.
Zero breaking changes. PHP 8.3 minimum. PHP Attributes across the framework, passkeys native, the AI SDK stable, Reverb without Redis, Cache::touch(), Teams back in starter kits. March 17, 2026 — the day the Laravel ecosystem aligned. Taylor Otwell announced it at Laracon EU 2026 and… Read More »Laravel 13 Is Here. Everything That Shipped Today, and Why This Release Hits Different.
WebAuthn is now native in Laravel 13 starter kits and Fortify. Face ID, fingerprint, hardware keys — no third-party packages, no stored passwords, no phishing surface. Here’s everything from how it works to full production setup. Passwords are a bad deal for everyone. For users:… Read More »I Ditched Passwords for Passkeys in Laravel 13. Here’s the Complete Setup Guide.
The two systems don’t conflict. But they don’t overlap the way you’d expect either. The rule is simpler than the confusion suggests: hooks for PHP classes, accessors for Eloquent attributes. Day 22 of this series covered PHP 8.4 property hooks in full. Day 20 covered… Read More »PHP 8.4 Property Hooks Inside Laravel Models. Here’s What Actually Works — and What Doesn’t.
Horizontal WebSocket scaling without Redis. One config change. Your existing MySQL or PostgreSQL database handles it. Here’s everything you need to know. There’s a tax on real-time features in Laravel. You want live notifications. You want a presence indicator showing who’s currently viewing a document.… Read More »Laravel 13 Adds a Database Driver for Reverb. You No Longer Need Redis for Real-Time.