The Laravel Podcast

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer is joined by two of his oldest friends in the community — Michael Dyrynda and Jake Bennett, co-hosts of the Laravel News Podcast — for a Laracon-fueled catch-up that starts with golf, soccer, and adult swim lessons before turning to the framework.

They dig into the Laracon US highlights that stuck with them: rediscovering the joy of building "silly software," using AI as an educator for your own codebase, and the new releases they're most excited to ship — first-party image manipulation, the Laravel AI SDK's OpenAI-compatible provider, OG tag management, and Blade support in Pint.

Along the way, Matt talks rescue work and Laravel 5 apps in the wild, and Michael pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to run Laracon AU.
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Michael Dyrynda on X - http://x.com/michaeldyrynda
Micheal Dyrynda on GitHub - http://github.com/michaeldyrynda  
Michael Dyrynda’s Website - dyrynda.com.au
Jake Bennett on X - http://x.com/jacobbennett
Jake Bennett on GitHub -  https://gitHub.com/jacobbennett
Jake Bennet’s Website - http://jakebennett.net/  
Christina Martinez's Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/2oUu9-jW6mg?si=rjckBIfr2wVCUKQA
Matt Stauffer’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/au9bIQsrh8k?si=BNJBMFIGFZR5oUqJ
Boom Party - https://boomparty.party/
Laracon AU - https://laracon.au/
Laravel News Podcast - https://podcast.laravel-news.com/
Mateus Guimaraes’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/Wb8qsfP2sJc?si=zSKc_EeVTv9wDA91
Will King’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/TlQm1fiQUZs?si=Dk2uZBgBHRcawsUC
Kent C. Dodd’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/zZPV_ggx5F8?si=88JRgSZ518lQhhp_
http://itch.io  - https://itch.io/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoring

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell for a post-Laracon debrief covering the biggest announcements across the Laravel framework, AI tooling, and Laravel Cloud.

They walk through the new goodies — the LSP, Artisan Doctor, and CPX (think NPX for Composer) — before digging into how AI is reshaping the framework itself, from human-in-the-loop tooling in the AI SDK to treating AI as a framework primitive. On the Cloud side, Taylor breaks down managed queues, sub-second scale-to-zero for everything, and why he'd turn it on for every app.

The conversation closes on a bigger idea: Laravel as a multilingual, full-stack application framework — not just a PHP one — and what that means for the community it's about to welcome.
 
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Taylor on X - https://x.com/taylorotwell
Laravel Updates from Laracon US 2026  — Taylor Otwell - https://www.youtube.com/live/0P-VMS7JMQY?si=_kp2ob_OMmo8PSF6&t=24379
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - Performance Monitoring for Laravel & PHP | Flare

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Aaron Francis — just days before his first day — to explore his journey from programmer and entrepreneur to VP of Marketing and Community at Laravel.

They trace his winding path from big-four CPA to developer, PlanetScale, and two and a half years of independence, then unpack the hard decision to "go to the mothership." Aaron lays out his strategic vision: protect the artisan core while expanding to the larger circle of pragmatic builders, and make Laravel's engineering credibility legible to the outside world.

It's a candid look at how his diverse experiences shape his approach to community and growth — and why lifting Laravel's reputation raises the tide for the whole community.
 
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Aaron Francis on X - https://x.com/aarondfrancis
Mostly Technical Podcast - https://mostlytechnical.com/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoring

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell, creator and CEO of Laravel, just days before Laracon in Boston, and gets into why Laravel has become such a natural fit for building with AI coding agents.

They talk through Laravel Boost, the value of an opinionated, “batteries included” framework when agents are writing the code, and how “vibe-coding” platforms tend to hit a wall that Laravel doesn’t. Along the way, Taylor makes a striking claim: the big shift in programming has already happened. Most of us aren’t writing code by hand anymore, and the open question is just how much we review versus trust.

It’s also a candid conversation about craft, deleting experiments without guilt, and Taylor leaning back into being unapologetically himself.
Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Taylor on X - https://x.com/taylorotwell
Voxacon - https://voxacon.laravel.cloud/
Kayla Helmick on the Laravel Blog - https://laravel.com/cloud/customer-stories/how-a-non-technical-built-an-app-with-laravel-cloud-claude
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravel
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Laracon US 2026 - https://laracon.us/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Honeybadger - https://www.honeybadger.io/for/laravel/

Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. 

In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Jeremy Butler, product design lead at Laravel, to trace his path from building an app to sell advertisements to shaping the look and feel of Cloud, Nightwatch, and Forge.

Jeremy shares how a copy of Laravel: Up & Running rescued a struggling NHS project, why he leans on systems thinking and design thinking over raw pixels, and how design finally became its own pillar at Laravel alongside engineering.

They also dig into his side projects — useClassy and DSLinter — plus design system governance, tokens, and why solid design fundamentals still matter in the age of AI.

Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstauffer
Jeremy on X - https://x.com/jrmymbtlr
Jeremy on Bluesky - https://bsky.app/profile/jrmybtlr.com
Laravel Up and Running - https://laravelupandrunning.com/
Classy - https://useclassy.com/
UseMods - https://usemods.com/
DSLinter - https://dslinter.com./
Laws of UX  - http://lawsofux.com
Untools - https://untools.co/
Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelphp
Laravel Website - https://laravel.com/
Laracon US 2026 - https://laracon.us/
Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/
Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast

----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/

Big thanks to the companies that support the show:

Honeybadger - https://www.honeybadger.io/for/laravel/

Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel Cloud

Laracon AU - https://laracon.au