freek.dev - all blogposts

Digital Sovereignty Is Written in PHP

2026-09-04T14:30:28+02:00

An interesting article on how PHP is used by the government.

Build Your Own AI-Powered Slack Bot with the Laravel AI SDK

2026-08-31T14:59:25+02:00

In this article, we’ll build an AI-powered Slack bot with the Laravel AI SDK. Unlike tools such as Claude Tag, it can switch AI providers, answer questions, execute tasks, and retrieve information from a knowledge base you control.

Is AI going to steal my job as a design engineer?

2026-08-25T14:30:28+02:00

Tom Wilson reflects on what AI is changing for design engineers, and where human judgment still matters. He argues that agents can take over more of the scaffolding work, while product taste, restraint, and polished visual craft remain the real edge.

Modular Monoliths: Creating Real Boundaries Before Reaching for Microservices

2026-08-20T15:48:25+02:00

A deep dive into modular monoliths, from module APIs and database ownership to cross-module communication, architecture tests, incremental migration, and the signals that justify microservices.

Immutability in PHP Beyond readonly

2026-08-17T14:12:30+02:00

A deep dive into immutability in PHP, from readonly properties and interior mutability to immutable value objects, collections, dates, cloning, boundaries, and testing.

Flare now uses OAuth for MCP, the CLI, and API

2026-08-15T12:30:29+02:00

We explain how Flare now uses OAuth to connect MCP clients, the CLI, and the API with scoped permissions instead of broad long-lived tokens. The new flow makes setup faster, adds read-only and project-level access control, and gives you one place to manage every connection.

Can we make default Tailwind a more accessible choice?

2026-08-14T12:30:33+02:00

A sharp look at Tailwind's default rem-based breakpoints, and the accessibility tradeoff they make. It explains how browser font-size preferences can shift layouts, why that can help some users, and why px breakpoints are still a defensible choice.

Why we removed AI solutions from Flare

2026-08-13T12:30:30+02:00

We explain why Flare's old AI-generated solutions no longer fit the way developers debug with modern coding agents. The replacement is a better workflow built around the MCP server, CLI, Copy for AI prompts, and agent-friendly docs.

`exit()` may silently break your parallel tests

2026-08-12T12:30:31+02:00

Michael explains why exit() can make parallel test workers crash without useful diagnostics, and why verbose flags do not help when the process dies outside PHPUnit's control. The fix is simple: throw an exception instead, so the failure is reported normally with a stack trace.

Amped up

2026-08-11T12:30:28+02:00

Sebastian explains why Amp became his default coding harness, and why user experience now matters more to him than model churn. He also shares the AGENTS.md tweaks that reduced overzealous verification during day-to-day coding.

sbx: Sandboxed Claude, complete with PHP and tools

2026-08-10T12:30:04+02:00

A practical walkthrough for running Claude Code inside Docker's new sbx sandbox, with a custom PHP setup and extra tools for open source work. Benjamin also explains why sandboxing AI coding agents is the sensible default.

What's new in PHP 8.6

2026-08-05T14:14:26+02:00

Brent surveys the most notable additions coming in PHP 8.6, including partial function application, the new polling API, readonly property defaults, and several smaller improvements and deprecations.

Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code

2026-08-04T14:56:26+02:00

Ankur Sethi argues that manually retyping LLM-generated code is a practical way to avoid cognitive debt. It slows you down, but helps you understand the code, catch bad suggestions, and keep a strong mental model of your codebase.

We Became Editors-in-Chief, and Nobody Trained Us

2026-08-03T16:56:25+02:00

An essay on how AI-assisted development turns engineers into full-time reviewers. We spend our days evaluating AI-generated diffs instead of writing code, and that shift carries a new cognitive fatigue and may widen the senior/junior gap.

PHP version stats: July, 2026

2026-07-29T17:23:14+02:00

Brendt shares fresh Packagist-based PHP version stats for July 2026: PHP 8.4 is now the most-used version, while PHP 8.5 reached 16% adoption after six months. He also notes that package minimum requirements still lag behind, with relatively few popular packages requiring a version that still gets active bugfix support.

Building an order fulfilment workflow in Laravel

2026-07-25T14:30:28+02:00

Steve King builds a real order fulfilment flow to show how a workflow engine handles long-running processes in Laravel. The post covers steps, signals, retries, branching, human approval, compensation, and the surrounding tooling in one practical example.

Setting up a remote environment for agentic coding on a VPS

2026-07-24T16:00:27+02:00

Mattias walks through moving an AI coding setup off a laptop and onto a private VPS. He covers Tailscale, tmux, a browser-based editor, and the small tweaks that make a remote setup practical from any device.

There's no artisan schema:show, so I built one

2026-07-24T14:40:27+02:00

A live, zoomable ER diagram of your Laravel app's actual database schema, safe to run in production because it only ever reads structure, never rows.

Preventing SSRF in Laravel: Why Blocking Private IPs Fails

2026-07-22T15:24:24+02:00

I found there wasn't any good SSRF prevention libraries for Laravel, so I built one. Very comprehensive tests based on this paper: https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity24/presentation/wessels

https://github.com/securized/laravel-ssrf

PHP Attributes: What, Why, How and When

2026-07-21T14:43:26+02:00

A deep dive into PHP attributes, from metadata and Reflection to practical design patterns, Laravel examples, performance, testing, and the cases where explicit code is better.