Scaffolding with the Real Thing: Laravel Starter Kits in Elyra
There's a familiar little ritual at the start of every Laravel project. You run laravel new, pick a starter kit, brew a coffee — and then spend the next hour squinting at unfamiliar files, trying to work out how the thing actually fits together.
Where does the auth flow live? How is Fortify wired in? Which file decides the sidebar layout? The code is all right there in your project, but you're reading it cold.
Elyra's @elyracode/laravel-starters extension turns this around. Instead of reading the starter kit after it's been scaffolded into your project, you load it as reference material before you start building, and let the agent use the official source as its guide.
What it actually does
The extension reaches out to Laravel's official starter kit repositories on GitHub and feeds the source code straight into the agent's context. No cloning, no local installs, no fuss. It hits the GitHub API, grabs the file tree, downloads the source files you care about, and tucks everything into a local cache for 24 hours.
Four kits are available, all matching Laravel 13.x:
react — Inertia 2, React 19, TypeScript, shadcn/ui
vue — Inertia 2, Vue 3 Composition API, TypeScript, shadcn-vue
svelte — Inertia 2, Svelte 5, TypeScript, shadcn-svelte
livewire — Livewire 4, Flux UI
Every one of them comes with Fortify authentication, two-factor auth, optional teams support, WorkOS integration, and a handful of layout variants — sidebar, header, and three different looks for the auth pages.
Installing
elyra install npm:@elyracode/laravel-starters
One line, and you're set.
The interactive way
Type /laravel:starter and a friendly selector pops up. Pick a kit and the extension fetches it from GitHub, loading the whole thing into your conversation. From there, ask the agent anything you'd like:
How does the Vue starter kit handle email verification?
Show me the 2FA setup flow in the Livewire kit.
What components does the React kit use for the sidebar layout?
Because the agent has the actual source code in front of it, the answers come back with real file paths and real implementations — not the vague, hand-wavy summaries you'd get otherwise.
The natural way
You don't need to remember the command, mind. Just ask, and the agent will fetch the right kit on its own:
Set up authentication following the Laravel Vue starter kit.
I need teams support using the Livewire starter patterns.
Build a dashboard page that matches the React starter kit's sidebar layout.
The extension registers a tool called fetch_laravel_starter, and the agent knows when to reach for it.
Applying files to your project
Sometimes you don't want to study the kit — you want the files. The apply_starter_files tool writes starter kit files straight into your project directory:
Apply the Vue starter kit to my project, but skip package.json and composer.json.
You can also be picky about which corners of the kit you bring across:
Just apply the auth pages from the React kit — only files under resources/js/pages/auth/.
The tool takes a path_prefix filter and an exclude list, so nothing lands in your project unless you've asked for it.
Fetching any GitHub repo
The extension comes with a more general-purpose companion too: fetch_github_repo. It isn't limited to Laravel starter kits — point it at any public repository, and it'll come back with the code:
Fetch livewire/flux and show me how the modal component works.
Look at how laravel/fortify handles the two-factor challenge flow.
Pull the stubs directory from laravel/framework so I can see the default migration template.
The agent fetches the repo, filters down to the code files, and loads them as context. Same caching, same approach — just without the four-kit fence around it.
Why reference context matters
There's a real, tangible difference between asking the agent to "build me a login page" and asking it to "build me a login page following the patterns from the official Vue starter kit." The first leans on the agent's general training, which might happily blend patterns from three different Laravel versions, two UI libraries, and a long-deprecated auth package. The second gives it the actual reference in context, so it can match the architecture, naming conventions, component structure, and Fortify integration with care.
This matters most for the parts of a Laravel app where lots of pieces have to work together — authentication flows, team management, layout switching. These are exactly the places where getting one piece slightly wrong causes subtle, irritating breakage three days later. Having the official implementation sitting right there as a reference keeps things consistent.
Caching
Fetched repositories live at ~/.elyra/cache/github/ with a 24-hour TTL. The first fetch might take a few seconds while it downloads files via raw.githubusercontent.com, but anything you ask for again within the day comes back instantly and doesn't touch the GitHub API at all.
No GitHub token required for public repositories — just install it and go.