Laravel best practices skill cuts through messy legacy code

Laravel Boost recently introduced a game-changing AI skill: laravel-best-practices. This tool isn't just a static linter; it’s an active agent that consults 189 specific rules across database performance, security, and Eloquent usage. Whether you are scaffolding a fresh Laravel project or auditing an older Povilas Korop legacy application, this skill ensures your code adheres to modern ecosystem standards from the first line of code.

Prerequisites and Tooling Setup

To use these skills, you need a working knowledge of the Laravel framework and a CLI-based AI agent like Claude Code. You should be comfortable with terminal commands and composer-based installations.

Key Libraries & Tools

• Laravel Boost: A CLI tool that configures your development environment with specific AI skills.
• Claude Code: The underlying AI agent that executes the analysis and code generation.
• laravel-best-practices: The official skill containing rules for migrations, routing, and controllers.
• Laravel Daily Structure Audit: A custom skill focused on architectural logic placement.

Implementation and Skill Activation

When installing Laravel, selecting the Boost option automatically injects the best practices skill. For existing projects, running composer update to reach version 2.4.1 or higher is necessary. Once active, you can prompt Claude Code to analyze your directory. The agent uses parallel sub-agents to read the 189 rule points without blowing through your token context window.

# Update and install the new skill on an existing project
composer update
boost install

Practical Syntax and Patterns

The skill actively enforces patterns that prevent common technical debt. For example, it checks migrations for proper indexing and foreign key constraints:

// The skill ensures these patterns are used in generated code
Schema::table('bookings', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->foreignId('user_id')->constrained()->cascadeOnDelete();
    $table->unique(['user_id', 'service_id']);
});

In controllers, it pushes for Form Requests and Route Model Binding to keep methods clean. If you're building a CRUD, the AI uses Route::resource by default, ensuring your routing file doesn't become a bloated mess of individual GET and POST definitions.

Insights from Real-World Audits

In a test on a project upgraded to Laravel 13, the skill identified 32 issues, including eight high-severity points like missing rate limiting and N+1 query vulnerabilities. Interestingly, it even flagged errors in code previously generated by AI, such as a lack of error handling on Stripe API calls. This demonstrates that even AI-generated code requires a specialized "best practice" layer to be production-ready.