Mastering Agent Skills with Laravel Boost 2.0

Guidelines vs. Agent Skills

In earlier versions, Laravel Boost relied heavily on guidelines—global context loaded at the start of every chat. This often bloated the context window and wasted tokens. Boost 2.0 introduces Agent Skills, a specialized format based on the emerging Open Code standard. Unlike guidelines, skills load dynamically. Your agent only accesses the Livewire or Pest skill when the current task actually requires that specific expertise. This makes your prompts roughly 40% leaner while maintaining high precision.

Implementation and CLI Workflow

Setting up Boost 2.0 is straightforward for both new and existing projects. For current applications, use Composer to upgrade the package. If you are starting fresh with the Laravel installer, the setup process now prompts you to configure Boost features immediately.

# Add a third-party skill from the community
php artisan boost:add-skill remote-dev/remotion

# Sync changes after manual overrides
php artisan boost:update

When you add skills, Boost handles the messy work of directory mapping. It knows Claude Code expects files in .claudecode/ while others might look in .ai/. You manage one skill.md file, and Boost distributes it to the correct hidden directories.

Custom Overrides and Best Practices

Standardized skills are excellent, but your team might have unique conventions. You can override any default skill by mirroring its folder structure within your project's local directory. By placing a custom skill.md in your local path and running the update command, you force the AI agents to prioritize your specific instructions over the defaults. For team collaboration, keep your .ai/ folder in version control but add individual agent folders (like .claudecode/ or .cursor/) to your .gitignore to avoid environment conflicts.