Atlas is a terminal-native AI coding agent that pairs with Laravel across Eloquent models, routes, and artisan commands. In 2026 you run atlas in a Laravel app with an artisan file, let Atlas read your models, routes, and migrations, then ask Atlas to add a controller or a Pest test, reviewing the diff before it writes.
Why Laravel developers use Atlas
Laravel developers use Atlas in 2026 because an Eloquent model is famously thin. Atlas reads your models, routes, and migrations, so it knows which columns a model actually exposes rather than inferring them from a class name and a naming convention.
An Eloquent class declares a few relationships and casts, and the columns it exposes as properties exist only in a migration file somewhere else entirely. A dynamic accessor adds attributes that appear in no property list. A facade resolves to a class the file never imports. Reading the migrations is therefore not a nice extra in Laravel, it is the only way to know what a model can do. Because Atlas has read the migrations alongside the models and routes, a suggested query filters on a column that exists and a suggested relationship matches a foreign key that was really created rather than one the class name implied.
Starting Atlas in a Laravel app with artisan
Getting started with Laravel in 2026 takes one command: run atlas in a Laravel app with an artisan file. Atlas is terminal-native, so it runs in the terminal where you already type php artisan, and nothing installs into an editor.
Atlas starts at the application root, finds the artisan file, and reads your models, routes, and migrations before proposing changes. The artisan file is a useful anchor because so much of Laravel is expressed through it: migrations are run through artisan, queues are worked through artisan, and the custom commands a team writes are registered as artisan commands. An agent that knows your artisan commands understands the operational surface of the application and not merely its source, which is the difference between suggesting a route and understanding how the app is run.
Controllers and Pest tests in Laravel
The daily Laravel loop in 2026 is direct: ask Atlas to add a controller or a Pest test, reviewing the diff. One Laravel feature is several files, since an endpoint usually needs a route, a controller, a form request, and a test.
Validation belongs in the form request rather than the controller, the controller belongs in a conventional namespace, and each piece has a home Laravel expects to find it in. Pest tests read as expressive closures rather than classes, which makes them pleasant to write and very easy to write shallowly, asserting a 200 came back and nothing more. An agent that has read the controller and the routes it serves produces tests that exercise the endpoint rather than restate it, and because Atlas has read the migrations, the controller it drafts queries relationships that exist instead of ones that throw at runtime.
Review and safety around Laravel migrations
Atlas computes a unified diff for every file edit and surfaces it for approval before writing. In Laravel that matters most for migrations: in 2026 you read the exact migration in standard diff format before it lands and long before php artisan migrate touches a database.
Every Atlas tool call is permission-gated against allow, ask, and deny rules, so artisan can be set to ask every time or denied entirely while ordinary reads stay allowed. That distinction is worth drawing carefully, because artisan is not one command but a doorway to many, and a team comfortable with an agent generating a migration is rarely comfortable with an agent applying one. Atlas drafts a plan in a read-only plan agent and asks before switching to a build agent, so a feature crossing routes, an Eloquent model, and a migration is agreed as a plan before any PHP file is rewritten.
Rollback and model choice for a Laravel codebase
Atlas snapshots file changes as git patches, so in 2026 a controller refactor that broke a Pest test is reverted rather than repaired under pressure. PHP is forgiving at edit time and unforgiving at request time, which makes a fast revert more valuable than it looks.
Atlas also lets you switch the active model and provider on the fly with favorites and recents, which addresses a different economy. Drafting a straightforward Pest test and untangling a badly nested Eloquent query with an N plus one problem hiding behind lazy loading are not the same task, and paying for a frontier model on both is waste. Once the Pest suite is green, Atlas can stage and create the commit on your behalf, in the same terminal where you have been working.
Getting started
- 01Run atlas in a Laravel app with an artisan file.
- 02Let Atlas read your models, routes, and migrations.
- 03Ask Atlas to add a controller or a Pest test, reviewing the diff.
- 04Write permission rules first, deciding whether artisan commands may run unattended.
- 05Ask Atlas to check an Eloquent query for lazy loading before approving it.
- 06Let Atlas stage the commit once the Pest suite passes.
Frequently asked questions
- can Atlas write Pest tests for a Laravel app
- Yes. Ask Atlas to add a controller or a Pest test, reviewing the diff. Atlas computes a unified diff for every file edit and surfaces it for approval before writing.
- does Atlas understand Eloquent models and Laravel routes
- Yes. Run atlas in a Laravel app with an artisan file and let Atlas read your models, routes, and migrations, so it works from the columns and relationships that actually exist.
- can Atlas run artisan commands
- Only if you permit it. Every Atlas tool call is permission-gated against allow, ask, and deny rules, so artisan can be set to ask each time or denied outright.
- why does an AI agent get Eloquent columns wrong
- Because an Eloquent model declares almost none of its columns. Atlas reads your migrations alongside your models, so it works from the columns that were really created.
- how do I roll back an AI change to a Laravel controller
- Atlas snapshots file changes as git patches, so a refactor that broke a Pest test is reverted in one step.
- can Atlas plan a Laravel feature before editing files
- Yes. Atlas drafts a plan in a read-only plan agent and asks before switching to a build agent, so you approve the scope before any PHP file is rewritten.
- does Atlas need a PHP IDE plugin
- No. Atlas is terminal-native, so it runs beside php artisan with nothing to install into an editor.
Try Atlas in your terminal
The terminal-native AI coding agent. Free core, single binary.
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