The Archives

Five things I learned about AI by building a real Laravel app with Claude Code. Not from reading articles — from doing the work and getting it wrong.

One question to Claude Code — "is there anything obvious that could be having a negative impact on performance?" — turned up 9 issues on a single page. Here's what it found and why each one matters.

When Flux UI's chart format prop silently does nothing, the fix is to format your data in PHP instead. Three attempts, one lesson.

You don't need to memorise git commands to ship Laravel code. Here's how I learned git by asking an AI assistant to walk me through it — and how it eventually just handled it for me.

Flux UI's checkbox component silently does nothing in traditional HTML forms. Here's why, and when you need native HTML instead.

A plain-language explanation of Laravel migrations for non-developers. What they are, why they exist, and how they work in practice — with a real example from changing a campaign duration setting.

A single 500 error on my idea edit page turned out to be three separate bugs stacked on top of each other. Here's how I found and fixed each one.

A practical guide to fixing the most common errors you'll hit when pulling a Laravel project locally for the first time — S3, Algolia, Livewire, and more.

Laravel's updateOrCreate silently creates duplicates when passed a null ID. Here's why SQL id = NULL never matches, and the simple guard to fix it.

A collection of small but meaningful UX improvements for Laravel apps — external link indicators, preventing layout shift, and more. Real examples from building a Livewire app.

Three types of visual shift that make your Laravel app feel janky, and the patterns to fix each one. Conditional UI, loading states, and modal content.

I received a scary-sounding security vulnerability report about my Laravel app. It was mostly spam — but it highlighted two real gaps worth fixing.

When should you use a Livewire component and when should you use Blade? A practical guide for non-developers building with Laravel, with real code examples and quotes from Taylor Otwell.