Best AI Agent Skills for Laravel and PHP Developers (2026)

Search any skills directory for "PHP" and you get a list that includes the Laravel framework itself, an open-source FAQ application, and a couple of MCP libraries meant for building servers rather than using them. Almost none of it is an agent skill. The actual answer for PHP developers in 2026 is narrow, official, and better than the directories suggest.

It is Laravel Boost, plus a directory Laravel launched in February, plus two composer packages worth knowing about. That is the honest list.

What's real, at a glance

Star counts and push dates pulled from the GitHub API on 11 August 2026.

Laravel Boost is the one that matters

Boost is Laravel's own package, and since its skills release it does something the generic coding assistants cannot: it reads your actual application instead of guessing from training data.

Install is two commands.

• composer require laravel/boost --dev
• php artisan boost:install

The install command asks which agents you use and generates the matching files. Claude Code support is usually wired up automatically. If it is not, the docs give you the manual registration: claude mcp add -s local -t stdio laravel-boost php artisan boost:mcp.

Boost regenerates its own output, so the docs suggest gitignoring the generated .mcp.json, the guideline files such as CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md, and boost.json. Your project rules are the exception, and I will come back to those.

The MCP server gives the agent ten tools

This is where Boost separates from a prompt file. The agent gets to inspect the running application:

• Application Info reads PHP and Laravel versions, database engine, installed ecosystem packages with versions, and your Eloquent models
• Database Schema, Database Query and Database Connections let it read structure and run queries
• Last Error and Read Log Entries pull from your actual log files
• Browser Logs surfaces client-side errors
• Get Absolute URL converts relative paths so the agent stops inventing broken URLs
• Record Rule writes a durable project rule
• Search Docs queries Laravel's hosted documentation API

That last one is the sleeper. Laravel runs a documentation service with, by its own count, more than 17,000 pieces of Laravel-specific information behind semantic search, scoped to the packages you have installed. An agent that can query current Filament 5 or Livewire 4 docs is a different animal from one working off whatever was in its training set two years ago.

Guidelines, skills and rules do different jobs

Boost splits agent context into three layers, and understanding the split is most of the value.

Guidelines load upfront, every session. They cover broad Laravel conventions. Boost ships them for the framework across 10.x through 13.x, plus Livewire, Flux UI, Folio, Herd, Inertia in four flavours, MCP, Pennant, Pest, PHPUnit, Pint, Sail, Tailwind, Volt and Wayfinder.

Skills load on demand. Boost installs them based on what it finds in your composer.json, so a project with livewire/livewire gets the livewire-development skill and nothing else pays context for it. The 13 that ship are fluxui-development, folio-routing, infer-conventions, inertia-react-development, inertia-svelte-development, inertia-vue-development, livewire-development, mcp-development, pennant-development, pest-testing, tailwindcss-development, volt-development and wayfinder-development.

Project rules teach the agent your application rather than the framework. They live in .ai/rules, each file declaring the globs it applies to, with an index that maps globs to rule files so a rule only loads when relevant. Unlike the generated guideline files, rules belong in source control, because they are team knowledge.

You record a rule by telling the agent to remember something, and it calls Boost's record-rule tool. Do it that way rather than hand-writing the file. Boost regenerates the rules index as part of recording, and a hand-added rule file stays invisible to agents until that index is rebuilt.

For an existing codebase with years of conventions in it, the infer-conventions skill sweeps validation, controllers, authorization, models, architecture, testing, frontend, database and console, then presents what it found for approval before writing anything. It records only non-default conventions and reports mixed patterns as mixed instead of pretending they are rules. That restraint is unusual and it is the reason I would run it on a legacy app.

To keep everything current as packages change, php artisan boost:update refreshes what you already have, and php artisan boost:update --discover scans for newly installed packages and offers their guidelines and skills. Wiring that into your composer post-update-cmd is a two-line change worth making.

If you do not want project rules at all, setting BOOST_RULES_ENABLED=false removes the record-rule tool and stops Boost managing .ai/rules.

skills.laravel.cloud is where the community list lives

Laravel launched an open directory of reusable agent skills for Laravel and PHP on 25 February 2026 at skills.laravel.cloud. It works like a package registry for knowledge modules rather than code: skills covering Laravel architecture, Eloquent optimisation, modern PHP patterns, testing workflows, API design and frontend integration. Install is npx skills add <owner/repo>, and it targets Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Copilot and the rest.

This is the correct place to look for a Filament resource generator or a skill that writes Pest tests from a spec doc. It is also community-submitted, which means the usual caution applies: read the SKILL.md before you install it, the same as you would read a composer package's source before adding it to production. We wrote about the risk of installing community skills in more detail.

The two composer packages that are not skills

Both of these get listed as "skills" in third-party directories. Neither is one. They are libraries for building your own MCP server in PHP, which is a different job.

opgginc/laravel-mcp-server installs with composer require opgginc/laravel-mcp-server and gives you a Laravel package for exposing MCP endpoints from your own app. MIT, 330 stars. Its last push was 26 April 2026, so it has been quiet for roughly three and a half months.

php-mcp/server installs with composer require php-mcp/server and is the framework-agnostic version, 862 stars, MIT. Its README points Laravel users at php-mcp/laravel for better framework integration. The thing to know before you build on it: its last push was 9 August 2025. A year without a commit on a package tracking a fast-moving protocol is a real risk, not a nitpick.

Reach for either only if you are building an MCP server. If you want your agent to understand your Laravel app, Boost already does it.

What the directories get wrong

Three errors show up over and over, and they are worth knowing because they are not specific to PHP.

The first is listing a framework as a skill. laravel/laravel has 84,789 stars and is the Laravel application skeleton. It is not an agent skill, has no SKILL.md, and installing it does nothing for your agent.

The second is inventing install commands. If a directory hands you a one-liner starting with "claude skill add", check it against the repo's own README before you run it. Real install paths in this corner of the world are composer commands, npx skills add <owner/repo>, the /plugin marketplace add and /plugin install pair, or copying a folder into ~/.claude/skills/.

The third is treating a star count as evidence of relevance. Star counts are usually accurate. What they measure is popularity of the repository, not whether the repository is a skill.

The setup I would actually run

For a Laravel project, install Boost, let it install the skills that match your composer file, and run infer-conventions once on an existing codebase. Then record rules as you hit them, using the agent rather than the filesystem. That is the whole thing. Adding more skills on top mostly costs context for no gain.

For plain PHP with no Laravel, there is no equivalent yet, and pretending otherwise would be doing you a disservice. Use a general-purpose coding skill bundle and write your own project rules by hand.

If you work across languages, our lists for Python, Go and React cover the same ground for those stacks, and our full list for developers has the broader tooling.

FAQ

Is Laravel Boost free?

Yes. It is MIT licensed and published by Laravel. The documentation API it queries is a hosted Laravel service, and the docs do not put it behind a paid plan.

Do I need Boost if I already use Cursor or Claude Code?

They solve different problems. Cursor and Claude Code are the agent. Boost is what tells the agent what your Laravel application looks like, which packages and versions you run, and where your conventions live. Boost supports both, along with Codex, Gemini CLI, Copilot in VS Code and Junie.

What's the difference between a Boost guideline and a Boost skill?

Guidelines load upfront in every session and cover broad framework conventions. Skills load on demand when the work is relevant, which keeps the detailed Livewire or Pest patterns out of your context until you need them. Both describe the Laravel ecosystem. Your own application's conventions belong in project rules instead.

Should I commit the files Boost generates?

Commit .ai/rules, because those are shared team knowledge. The docs suggest gitignoring the rest, including .mcp.json, CLAUDE.md, AGENTS.md and boost.json, since running boost:install or boost:update regenerates them.

Are there agent skills for Symfony, WordPress or Drupal?

Not much that is verifiable. The community listings in these corners are thin and several linked repositories have moved or gone stale. Symfony and WordPress developers are better served writing project rules by hand than installing a two-star repository found in a directory.