Laravel MCP Companion

formerly Laravel Docs MCP Server

⚠️ BETA SOFTWARE - This project is in active development. Features may change and breaking changes may occur.

Laravel MCP Companion is a documentation aggregator and navigator for the Laravel ecosystem. It centralizes and organizes high-quality documentation from across the Laravel ecosystem, making it easily discoverable through your AI assistant.

How It Compares

Use Boost when writing code and you need project-aware context. Use Context7 for non-Laravel libraries. Use Companion when learning, researching, or need Laravel documentation reference.

What you get:

• Multi-version Laravel documentation (6.x through latest) with enhanced search
• Learning paths - Structured learning sequences by topic and skill level
• "I need X" finder - Describe what you need, get relevant documentation
• Difficulty filtering - Content organized by beginner/intermediate/advanced
• 15 semantic categories - Browse documentation by topic area
• Auto-discovery Laravel services - Forge, Vapor, Envoyer, Nova (117+ sections)
• Community package documentation - 42,000+ lines from Spatie, Livewire, Inertia, Filament
• Package integration guides - Installation and setup for 22 curated packages
• Cross-package compatibility - Learn which packages work well together
• Unified search across core Laravel docs, services, packages, and learning resources
• Daily updates - Automatically syncs with latest documentation

Installation

Listed in the official MCP Registry as io.github.brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion — clients with registry support can install it from there directly. Manual setup:

Claude Desktop

1. Open Claude Desktop Settings

   • Click Claude menu → Settings → Developer → Edit Config

2. Add to your configuration file:

   config.json

   Copy

   {
     "mcpServers": {
       "laravel-mcp-companion": {
         "command": "docker",
         "args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", "ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest"]
       }
     }
   }
   

3. Restart Claude Desktop for changes to take effect

Config file locations:

• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json
• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

Claude Code

Use the claude mcp add command:

# Add with Docker
claude mcp add laravel-mcp-companion -- docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest

# Or add to project-specific config (for team sharing)
claude mcp add laravel-mcp-companion --scope project -- docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest

The --scope project option creates a .mcp.json file in your project root that can be committed to version control.

Configuration Options

These options can be used with the Docker command. For example:

# Pin to a specific older Laravel version
docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest --version 11.x

# Force update all documentation
docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest --force-update

Keeping documentation current

Documentation ships inside the image, and a new image is published whenever the documentation is refreshed, so :latest carries the most recently published snapshot. The catch is that docker run reuses the copy you already have — once you've pulled the image, you keep running it until you pull again. Refresh whenever you like:

docker pull ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest

Or add --pull=always to your MCP config so every start checks for a newer image. It costs a moment of startup time and needs a working connection, so it's opt-in rather than the default:

"args": ["run", "--rm", "-i", "--pull=always",
         "ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest"]

You don't have to track this yourself. The server tells your assistant how old the documentation is for the Laravel version it's serving, so if you ask about something newer than that snapshot it will say so and offer to refresh instead of answering from stale pages. You can also just ask — "how current are your Laravel docs?"

To update in place without pulling a new image, --update-docs fetches fresh documentation for the selected Laravel version during startup. Documentation for Forge, Vapor, Nova, Envoyer and community packages refreshes separately, through the update_external_laravel_docs tool your assistant can call.

With --rm the download is discarded when the container exits, so it repeats on every start. A named volume keeps it — but note the trade-off:

docker run --rm -i -v laravel-mcp-docs:/app/docs \
  ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest --update-docs

A volume overrides the image's documentation. Once populated it masks /app/docs, so pulling a newer image no longer updates what the server reads — the volume becomes your source of truth and --update-docs becomes the way you refresh it. Use a volume when you want to control updates explicitly; stick to plain docker pull if you'd rather the image stay in charge.

Transform Modes

By default the server no longer lists all of its tools. Instead it exposes a compact, search-first interface that keeps your AI client's context window lean:

• search (default) — Exposes search_tools (BM25 relevance search over the tool catalog) and call_tool (proxy to invoke any underlying tool). search_laravel_docs stays pinned and directly callable.
• code (experimental) — Exposes Code Mode meta-tools (tags, search, get_schema, execute) that let the client discover tools and orchestrate them with sandboxed Python. Requires the fastmcp[code-mode] extra (included in requirements.txt). Avoid exposing this publicly over HTTP — execute is a code execution endpoint.
• none — Pre-0.9 behavior: every tool listed directly. Use this if your MCP client doesn't handle the synthetic search tools well.

# Restore the old flat tool listing
docker run --rm -i ghcr.io/brianirish/laravel-mcp-companion:latest --transform-mode none

HTTP transport security