laravel-best-practices

name laravel-best-practices description Apply this skill whenever writing, reviewing, or refactoring Laravel PHP code. This includes creating or modifying controllers, models, migrations, form requests, policies, jobs, scheduled commands, service classes, and Eloquent queries. Triggers for N+1 and query performance issues, caching strategies, authorization and security patterns, validation, error handling, queue and job configuration, route definitions, and architectural decisions. Also use for Laravel code reviews and refactoring existing Laravel code to follow best practices. Covers any task involving Laravel backend PHP code patterns. license MIT metadata {"author":"laravel"} Laravel Best Practices Best practices for Laravel, organized as an index of rule files. Each rule file teaches what to do and why. For exact API syntax, verify with search-docs . Consistency First Before applying any rule, check what the application already does. Laravel offers multiple valid approaches, and the best choice is the one the codebase already uses, even if another pattern would be theoretically better. Inconsistency is worse than a suboptimal pattern. Check sibling files, related controllers, models, or tests for established patterns. If one exists, follow it. Don't introduce a second way. These rules are defaults for when no pattern exists yet, not overrides. How to Apply Check the changed files, nearby code, project configuration, and relevant tests for established patterns. Deviate only for a correctness or security defect, and call the deviation out. Map every affected concern to the rule index below. Read each mapped rule file before editing. Skip unrelated rule files. Make the smallest coherent change. Keep the application's architecture and naming instead of introducing a second pattern for the same job. Verify version-sensitive Laravel APIs for the installed version with search-docs , or inspect the installed framework when it is unavailable. Run the narrowest relevant tests first, then the project's formatting and static-analysis checks when the change warrants them. Re-read the diff against every mapped rule before finishing. Rule Index Cross-cutting changes often need more than one rule file. Concern Read Query count, eager loading, indexes, large datasets rules/db-performance.md Subqueries, aggregates, complex ordering and query plans rules/advanced-queries.md Models, relationships, scopes, casts rules/eloquent.md Authentication, authorization, input safety, secrets, uploads rules/security.md Form Requests and validation rules rules/validation.md Controllers, route binding, resources, middleware rules/routing.md Schema changes, columns, foreign keys, indexes rules/migrations.md Jobs, retries, uniqueness, batches, Horizon rules/queue-jobs.md Cache lifetime, invalidation, locks, memoization rules/caching.md Outbound requests, retries, timeouts, fakes rules/http-client.md Exceptions, reporting, rendering, log context rules/error-handling.md Events and notifications rules/events-notifications.md Mailables and mail assertions rules/mail.md Scheduled tasks and overlap protection rules/scheduling.md Collections, lazy iteration, bulk operations rules/collections.md Blade components, attributes, composers rules/blade-views.md Environment values and application configuration rules/config.md Tests: coverage, factories, fakes, and assertions the testing-best-practices skill Naming, helpers, file boundaries, PHP style rules/style.md Actions, services, dependencies, application structure rules/architecture.md Decision Rules Prefer framework features and existing application abstractions over new helpers or dependencies. Avoid speculative abstractions. Extract code when it creates a clear domain boundary, removes meaningful duplication, or makes behavior independently testable. Keep database access out of Blade views and prevent hidden N+1 queries across controllers, resources, jobs, and serialization.