A local Laravel development environment for Mac.

A Laravel app needs a web server pointed at public/ that sends every request to public/index.php, a PHP version that satisfies composer.json, a database, and usually Redis, somewhere to send mail and Node for Vite. php artisan serve covers the first part for one app at a time on localhost:8000, but once you have several apps, queues, HTTPS callbacks or a client on an older PHP, a proper local server is less hassle.

Bothy runs Caddy, php-fpm and MySQL or MariaDB as ordinary Mac services. Your app stays in a normal folder and each one gets its own https://name.test, PHP version and FPM pool.

The Laravel starter runs composer create-project laravel/laravel, creates a database, points .env at it and runs the migrations. public/ is detected as the document root automatically.

For an app that already lives in git, clone it into a new site, install dependencies and create the database in one command:

bothy site add crm --git git@github.com:you/crm.git --composer --db

If the GitHub CLI is installed and signed in, the app lists your repositories to pick from instead. Then copy .env.example to .env, fill in the database settings below and generate a key.

bothy site exec runs a command in the site's folder with that site's PHP first on PATH, so artisan, composer and your test runner use the version the site is served with, not whatever Homebrew linked last:

bothy site exec crm -- php artisan key:generate
bothy site exec crm -- php artisan migrate --seed
bothy site exec crm -- composer require laravel/horizon
bothy site exec crm -- php artisan test

Switching a legacy app to an older PHP is bothy site php legacy 8.1 (after bothy php install 8.1); other sites aren't affected.

Local databases use root with no password on 127.0.0.1. The first server is on 3306; extra MySQL or MariaDB servers run on their own ports, shown in the Databases screen.

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=crm
DB_USERNAME=root
DB_PASSWORD=

MAIL_MAILER=smtp
MAIL_HOST=127.0.0.1
MAIL_PORT=1025

REDIS_HOST=127.0.0.1
REDIS_PORT=6379

Recent Laravel versions default to SQLite and the log mailer; the lines above switch to MySQL and Mailpit, which catches everything at mail.test so notifications and password resets never reach a real inbox. You can also set environment variables per site with bothy site env crm APP_ENV local; Laravel won't overwrite a variable that's already set in the environment with a value from .env.

Redis is an add-on on 127.0.0.1:6379. Laravel's default Redis client is phpredis, which needs the PHP extension for each version you use:

bothy addon enable redis
bothy addon php-ext redis 8.3

Each site gets its own Redis database number, set as REDIS_DB in the site's environment, which is the variable Laravel's config/database.php reads, so two apps' caches don't collide.That variable is set for PHP-FPM only, so for queue workers started with bothy site exec set the same number in .env or with bothy site env crm REDIS_DB 3, which applies to both. bothy site purge crm flushes that site's Redis database. Memcached is available the same way if an older app uses it.

Queue workers and the scheduler are long-running artisan commands; run them in a terminal tab through the site's PHP:

bothy site exec crm -- php artisan queue:work
bothy site exec crm -- php artisan schedule:work

For front-end assets, enable the Node add-on (bothy addon enable node). It puts node and npm on PATH in Terminal and in bothy site exec, for Vite, Mix and Tailwind builds:

bothy site exec crm -- npm install
bothy site exec crm -- npm run build

bothy site xdebug crm on turns on Xdebug for that one site, in debug,develop mode on port 9003, so PhpStorm or VS Code can connect while your other sites run at full speed. It's installed for that PHP version the first time you use it.

Laravel's own log is still in storage/logs; Bothy adds the PHP error log, access log and slow log for each site, followed live in the Logs tab or with bothy logs crm --kind php. The site's page also shows requests per hour, 4xx and 5xx counts and p95 response time, which is a quick way to notice a route that got slow after a change. See live logs.

Bothy's MCP server gives AI assistants tools for sites, databases and raw SQL, PHP settings, logs and mail. You can ask Claude Code to "create a Laravel site called crm with a database and Xdebug on", then have it run migrations and check the log when a test fails. Everything it does uses the same config as the app, and every bothy command also takes --json for agents that prefer the shell. See AI development and Claude Code with local PHP.