Full-Stack Web
Developer

If you've used Claude Code, Cursor, or any AI coding assistant recently, you've probably noticed they're getting better at doing things, not just generating text. The bridge that makes this possible is MCP: the Model Context Protocol. I've built two MCP servers that I use daily. One manages the blog you're reading right now. The other is a personal knowledge base called Acervo. Both are Laravel apps, and both let me manage content directly from Claude Code without ever opening a browser.

Claude Code is already fast. Point it at a Laravel project and it can read files, run tests, execute commands. But it's working blind. It doesn't know your routes, your database schema, or what's in your logs until it goes digging through files. That's where Laravel Boost comes in. Boost exposes your Laravel application's internals as MCP tools. Routes, models, schema, logs, tinker, all available to Claude Code without it having to parse files or guess. The difference is immediate: instead of Claude Code grep-ing through your route files, it just knows your routes. If you haven't read it yet, my post on What is Laravel Boost and Why Every Laravel Dev Needs It covers what Boost does and why it matters. This post focuses on the hands-on setup with Claude Code.

Every Laravel app has opinions. Naming conventions, custom casts, query scopes, validation patterns, how you structure form requests. All of it adds up to a codebase that works a certain way. Ask an AI to generate code for your app without that context and you get textbook Laravel that compiles but doesn't belong. The generated controller uses $request->all() instead of your form request classes. The migration uses string where you always use an enum cast. The query builds raw joins instead of using your custom scopes. It's technically correct and practically useless.