Taylor Otwell and Povilas Korop: Laravel AI SDK + Agentic Workflows

All right. Taylor said, "I'm on backstage." Sh everyone W. Taylor. Okay. W Taylor. Exactly. Do you still get nervous when you go on stage? Uh, I wasn't too nervous for this one because I've actually given some of this demo before. Um, this was my second time to give it, but the first time I gave it, I was super nervous. And I definitely still get nervous, you know, like Laracon, it's like there's a lot of people out there. So, and you don't want to screw up and you do get nervous. So, a lot of people it's been recorded, especially when you're live coding a lot of stuff. Like I mean you know it's Yeah. Yeah. But well for you must be like even more you know even more expectations right because you have built so much stuff and people always expect more from you and I do think personally I've seen the read me of this package and you definitely exceed the expectations like I I I knew it would be big but you literally did a lot on this one. Yeah it actually turned out bigger than I thought. I I didn't know it would start to get so like robust but I'm actually really happy with how it turned out. Um it was fun to hand this actually the first package I've written since uh like two years since me and you basically built vault right and then uh folio those were the last packages that I wrote uh until the AI SDK so it was good to be back like writing stuff. All right so the your talk wasn't actually streamed meaning that it's still like kept a little bit under wraps. Yeah. U so people have seen a few tweets from apparently Marcel and other people of course they took pictures. What can you tell us about this new AI SDK? Like maybe some of the features you can already talk about. You don't have to but maybe some stuff you can already share. Yeah. So the AI SDK does you of course like text generation, images, audio, transcription. Not only that, it does like embeddings. It does vector stores. We added stuff even to eloquent. So like during the talk I do like where vector similar to and we can query vector embeddings in like uh a PG vector postcrist database. Oh nice. Um so there's it's actually not it's actually stuff in the framework and in the AI SDK for like to make embeddings. We have like string of and then just two embedings. So like there's new methods on classes that people have seen before like collection string. Uh so super cool um cued agents structured output tools web search all sorts of cool stuff. Shad my favorite one was string of this to embeddings. That's a good one. And I was like oh my god like literally API we already know. It's just literally new methods on it. And I think the $1 million question is when the AI SDK will be published. Yeah. So, we're going to publish it Thursday, which I think is like February 5th or something like that. February 5th. Yeah. We're going to open source it on GitHub, so everyone will be able to read it, contribute to it. Uh, we'll do like a beta tag on that, and then if everything goes well, like try to do go stable like a few weeks later, you know? Okay, let's [ __ ] go. W Taylor chat. Everyone typing W Taylor WDK. Um, you know, everyone's super excited about the ADK. They wanted me to stream the thing hardcore and I said, I won't do it. I I don't I don't know if I should do it, and I didn't do. People want to know about your agent agentic workflow like how do you use cloud code if you use it like what AI what um terminal do you use if a terminal cursor sublime what are you up to right now yeah so I use uh cloud code pretty much exclusively I use ghosty as my terminal I still use sublime text for my editor so like in cloud code I use plan mode quite a bit so like if I'm planning out a new feature I'll use plan code I'll like refine it a little bit and then I'll let cloud code build it even after it builds a feature I still like massage the code I put things in the right order. I like clean up stuff. I make things simpler like make it look like you know Laravel, right? But it takes care of writing a lot of the boring code like like I said on stage like wrote a lot of the tests for AI SDK. I cleaned them up a little bit but like writing tests is kind of boring, right? So like um I wanted to use the AI SDK to do that and then I can work on the fun stuff. Um some of the stuff I wrote by hand like a lot of the like structure and architecture and like the interfaces I like handcoded all that and then I can just tell cloud code, hey I already wrote all the interfaces. uh you like fill in you know the interfaces so that works really well I think right so you shared a story on Slack the other day where you prompt cloud code about a project and he give you an answer you want to share a little bit that story because I think it's who wrote it yeah yeah so after I wrote the AI it was like 90% done I asked cloud code cuz I was just curious I was like look at this package like really look at all the files like inspect it who do you think wrote this package I was curious like what it would say and it was like this is almost definitely written by Taylor Rawwell or if Taylor did not write is someone that works at Laravel cuz it's like it's too embedded, you know, like in the in the style and like of the framework. So, yeah, pretty funny. Your style must be also a little bit unique. So, they can literally track it to you. All right, dude. Two more questions. I you I mean I I cannot imagine how exhausted you are after giving your talk. You're not really bringing on stream. So, uh people want to know news about Laravel 13. Uh do you have any news on this project? Um what what are you planning on this one? Yeah, so a lot of the Laravel 13 stuff is around AI SDK, right? So like the new query builder methods, the new embedding stuff. We have done some stuff that's not related to AI. So we have JSON API support in Laravel 13. So like the cloud API or like the new forge API, it uses the JSON API spec. You can just do that built in now in Laravel. So the old resources still work, but there's actually a new JSON API resource. Makes it super easy to build JSON API APIs. And then that's nice because then you can have like generated documentation for those APIs using like Mintify or something like that. Uh so that's in Laravel 13. There's a bunch of other like small stuff in Laravel 13, but the big thing is really the AI SDK and JSON API things like that. Right. Right. All right. Chad, one last question is um anything you can share about Laval in 2026. Of course, the world now is just moving moving so fast, right? The Lavali SDK I think like you took the decision of writing that package like not that long time ago, right? So, what can you share about Lavel in 2026 potentially things about Lakon US? I don't know. Um I mean there's a lot of crazy stuff happening at Laravel. So like let's just start with like open source. So open source is we have a pretty good team now. We have five people on open source. So we now have a person fulltime on inertia. That's Pascal. We have a person fulltime on starter kits. Uh Wendle. We have pushback here from India who's been spending a lot of time on Laravel Boost. Um we have Joe Tannen Bomb. Of course we have new hires uh Ben guy name Titus who's working full-time on the VS Code extension. So we actually have a lot of people dedicated full-time to open source sort of initiatives. and then I'm basically on open source. Um, we got a lot of cloud stuff going on. So, we're working on faster hibernation on cloud, more enterprise features, more like database stuff. Um, before you go out of cloud, actually got two questions that asked, I didn't know if I should ask, but people asked about if there is any plans of making a free trial or a free plan or anything. Yeah, we're working on that. We'll have a free We'll have a free trial probably coming out over the next few weeks. Um, so you'll be able to try try cloud for free. No credit card up front. that's going to be a big deal. Uh we are like toying around with the idea of free plans. We'll see if we can get there. The fast hibernation is part of that, right? We have to be able to like efficiently use all the compute to be able to offer this like sustainably. So I I hope we can get there to like have like I want to get there. Like that's where I want to get, but like don't hold me to it. We've also got like secret projects going on at Laravel as usual. Like you're working on secret project. Uh we always have secret projects at Laravel. Hopefully later this year we'll be able to show more of those. Of course, Nightw Watch team is cooking. So, I mean, we got lots of good stuff going on, dude. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate everyone. Type W chat on W Taylor. Thank you, man. Appreciate, man. I'm going to give you the necessary rest now. You deserve it. So, you know, see you around, man. Thank you. Oh my god. Wet everyone. Wed everyone. It was so good. So good. So good. So good. Oh my god. And guess what? The mighty The mighty Povillas is here. Sh. Here we go. Here we go. The mighty Povillas. Everyone typing W poof villa chat chat. Thank you so much for coming man. Oh thank you for coming here and uh you were one of the reasons I actually came here. So many people were uh saying to me come to India come to India. Yep. Yep. I'm here. By the way in this morning everyone was jumping on pilas to grab a picture. By the way okay everyone look at this. My chat is more fun of you than anything else. W Pillas W Pillas you know. Uh yeah you know I want to I want to chat with you dude. Big fan of you. You know, I've been super into super into content. You are way into content and you started way before than me. So, you're publishing content every single day for the last 5 years. What is the secret? Just keep doing that. So, I just my secret is I started and I just haven't stopped. That that's that's basically it. And also I I give uh I get a lot of energy from the community. So, even from people here and in general, I get a lot of questions on socials, on my YouTube channel, and I'm re-energized by community questions all the time. So, I don't even have to to keep up with Should I maybe look at the camera? No, you can do whatever you want. So, this stream is the most informal thing in the planet. You can you can literally do this while you're speaking if you want to. It's perfectly fine. So, that's So, so you're better at that than I am. I'm like uh the guy for recording videos and and polishing and you're the best at like Something that on stream doesn't work is you just have to like it's just in real life, you know? Yeah. You just have to act normal like you do usually. What is it depends like people are typing it depends. What does that mean? Oh, it depends. Uh it's my cap. I'm not sure if you remember. So, a few years ago I decided to stop uh answering most of the questions with the same phrase. I just made a cap for it. So, so I have a cap. I don't have it here but in my office. So, in some videos it actually paid off at like €15 to make a custom uh text on the cap and uh and whenever I talk about something and I know that the answer is it depends instead of talking that in the video I just put on the cap and then continue talking. So, it's like like a meme but it's yeah people remember that. So, I made a YouTube hook. So, basically I interviewed Povillas. If you haven't watched it, go to my YouTube channel, watch type pilovas, you'll find the interview. I basically took one part where I asked you uh did you ever apply for Laravel and then I went to another section of the interview and I cut it the the the part where you say it depends and then I made the hook which is I ask you have you ever applied for Laravel and then suddenly you put the the cap it depends and it was so good. I haven't seen that one but yeah I I imagine that it's good. So so yeah Noo some you're asking me question about like secrets or something. You're you're so good at that yourself. In 5 years, you must you must know way more stuff than me on analytics of YouTube and content wise like understanding your audience, what it works, what it doesn't. That's not a science which is on books and comes from experience. Uh like with everything like you you can work with Laravel better with 5 years of experience of practical experience. Same with for example AI. People keep asking me what to how to use AI, what to use, how to think about it. And it's the same. just practice with stuff for for enough and then you get better and then you can uh then you can go to on interviews and on podcasts then you become famous and stuff. I can make I can make my own co my own agent to do live streams and then it will be just my agent and not me. People are asking how do you prepare content or topics like how do how do they appear? Uh it's usually from the audience as I said. So actually I spend 1 hour per day on Twitter just reading uh but not Twitter feed uh Twitter keywords like Laravel AI and stuff. So that's how I find out all the news about like all the releases, all the new packages and stuff for my newsletter. And some of those ideas uh come to life to topics. Then I have a huge to-do list, right? Uh it's getting smaller because there's only so many videos I can uh shoot on like Laravel topics. Laravel is stable enough. It's not on the AI coding channel though, right? No, no, I have that's why I have a new part of the reason AI channel is like huge list of topics but for Laravel I mean it's stable which is good good for AI as well. Taylor tweeted it recently that Laravel structure is stable and docs are great. So it's good for AI, right? Uh but yeah, there's so many videos only I can make about N plus1 queries and structure and stuff. Uh so I do uh maybe I will shoot less videos for Laravel. But now we have another new energy coming up with Laravel boost stuff with AI SDK. So there's another uh new new wave and also new new package has come up. So yeah, I I will I will keep doing that. Uh but not that many topics for Larl anymore except for question. A lot of LA SDK at least. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that pretty pretty soon on stage. So I will I will try to live tweet if I if I manage to to do that. I will try to listen to Taylor and maybe summarize it for you guys uh in a way. But yeah, how do I come up with topics? Uh you guys give me the topics mostly. So So it's it's not I think something that must work for you at least works for me is that just speak about what stuff you are excited about. Um maybe like sometimes it doesn't come like that obviously uh but I I don't know if AI SDK is coming out is obviously something that excites me for today. So I'm going to just record on ad. Well for me I don't do that as much. I used to but then I looked at the audience numbers and sometimes what I'm excited about is not the same as like what what people are excited about. So for example I have an example recent about AI. So whenever I publish something about reviewing new models like new GLM, new cloud code version, new new whatever comparison that is also that that sells. It's like all always the best videos. But if I go somewhere deeper like how can you save 10% of contact by doing something inside internally, Sadly people don't care about that as much because I recently discovered a bug in Laravel boost how Laravel boost uh gets worse with context. So, I reported the bug, the the the issue and I decided to make a video about that and I was so excited about my discovery. How can I improve boost and it was one of the worst performing video although I was excited about that. So, can you say hi to the Laval community in Venezuela? Venezuela. Hi, Venezuela community. Here we go. Here we go. No, it's fine. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Two legends in the same screen. Well, he's a legend. I'm trying to become one. Shad, which channel of Puas is your favorite? Laravel Daily or W or Coding AI daily. Um there's also filament. I think Laravel Daily is probably a channel with so many followers at the minute with the other ones will be difficult to get close like easily, right? Oh, for sure. AI coding daily isn't growing as fast as I was expecting. I was expecting the topic to be so hot it would like grow uh very fast, but it's it's the same slow steady growth. So same um maybe for some topics or some genres on YouTube it it it like you can become viral hit like in a day but for dev education whatever is the topic it seems like you just need to do the same for long enough. Uh so for example for filament daily it kind of stopped growing at like 10,000 subscribers. Now it's at 12. Reach the cap of it seems like like filament community is uh is really sexy. filament and a lot of users, but it seems like there's like that much users and it it stopped growing. Uh it still grows but not as quick and also I don't do as many videos. So so there's a cap there but it also like 3 years in the making for 10,000 subscribers. So same old same growth and but actually it's not my goal. My goal is not like to have another silver button from YouTube uh which I I have one I don't you have one I have vulnerable deal. Yeah. One. Is it heavy though? It's always something I wonder. It's It's not really special to be honest. It's just like like the unboxing moment. I would get drunk easily if I was, you know, I would celebrate hardcore. It's uh it's like you have one 1,000k subs and then like the next day is still the same. So you you wake up the next day, you shoot another video. So it's not it was a huge moment of unboxing of seeing my name on like silver button. But but then how does it work? Did they ask you for an address? How does it work? Yeah. Yeah. They send it to you by post. Uh there's some verification from what I remember. It was like two years ago when I received it. So again, nothing really special. It's it's similar to to being approved for like AdSense or something. Yeah. That you give the address uh like some verification in a few months it arrives. Uh so yeah, but my goal isn't like have 100k for AI coding daily. Maybe. So AI is I think here is here to stay. So I will stay on that. I'm passionate about it for now. what will happen in 2027 like no one knows but for now this is my new like direction it isn't it for all of us in some way or another so yeah we'll see what happens but I I'm still passionate about sharing my experience uh at some point I thought of myself as a teacher as a like um educator but recently at some point I realized I'm more like a journalist like yourself now here with microphone I'm I'm more like a reporter sharing my opinion about stuff about like trying to con like shorten it into like 5 minute or 10 minute videos. This is my strength as people tell me like I'm good at presenting the thing in a short way. So you are better with like live streams and everything. So every everyone has their own strengths. Uh so yeah I just keep doing the same with just different topics. So now it's AI. There was filament a few years ago. Filament is still here. It's still hot. It's not going anywhere. It's just not not new anymore. Uh so yeah, now it's AI. So I'm passionate still passionate about what I do. I just do it for another topic and will do it for as long as as long as I can sustain it because now future is uncertain for content creators like Jeffrey Way from Larcast like myself with my courses. I'm not sure what happens. The sales are definitely down but not down as much as as it's not scary but the trend is like keep in mind. Yeah. Yeah. The trend is that fewer people will buy courses. So what will happen with my content in like a year or two? We'll see. But for now, I'm still passionate about what I do and I will I want to continue especially especially sorry I'll finish my thought after this conference after conferences like this people approach me saying thank you for my videos remotivates me for like another year ahead. You see you see a lot of give bring you back the energy man which is very good. So with the $1 million question, which coding agent or agentic flow or call it whatever you you want to you are are you doing like do you use Jun with PHP storm? Do you use you know cloud code? Which model are you using? How do you you know if you were to start a project tomorrow like what would you do? Uh okay so current trend for this week I can answer for this for this week chat this is how fast things are moving. So actually uh funny fun thing at Laravel live UK last year in summer we were talking about that and same question my answer was I can recommend cursor for this month. So that was I remember so at that month I recommended cursor on my flight here to India I canled cursor subscription because I moved to cloud code fully. So this is how fast things change in like months. Uh so now I'm a cloud code fan with us 4.5. I think a lot of people uh noticed especially during like Christmas break a lot of people tried OPUS 4.5 and it's it's scary good. Uh especially for like demo projects for my videos. A lot of the code are at least half written by AI. I I'm not ashamed to to say that anymore because I see a lot of people experimenting with AI like I do. And currently if you just use cloud code with Opus 4.5 I'm currently on $100 plan. So I had to upgrade from $20 per month wasn't enough for me. So I upgraded to 100 but not to 200. So $100 is like enough for me for for all of my experiments. I never run out of usage. And the main thing is that people experiment with like tools on top, plugins, skills and stuff. But the vanilla cloud code with Opus became so much better like in last month. Like plan mode is awesome. The debugging stuff, the way how it runs the thing. I mean if you can invest in $100 max plan of cloud code that alone may be enough without any external stuff and and then the main problem is the prompting the prompting and the planning if that part is great uh then uh then yeah the result will be will be better uh so yeah there's no people are experimenting with like specd driven development with like various tools on top orchestrators. I I'm I'm not even sure about the name. So there are like new cloud code workflow coming up every day. This fuel now from Ashley as well. Oh yeah. Which is literally combining multiple agents and coordinate them, orchestrate them. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, the new trend. So what we will use for multiple agents and for bigger prompts. So now this is a question like last year question like what what model do we use this year's question how do we manage the agents? So it's happening so fast. But for now, for this week again, I'm cloud code with Opus fan without bells and whistles. Yeah, I'm in as I'm in the same approach too. I use cloud code us 4.5 for planning and for building. I don't have anything fancy like an orchestrator of agents. I just use the same agent to do everything. I don't even use sub agents like I don't think they are actually super necessary. You see, I've tried I've tried if you have if you have the task that you can literally divide between sub agents for some tasks does make sense but for for most of it doesn't. Also actually I have a subscription for codeex CLI as well. Sometimes as a backup plan I use codeex CLI with GPT52 which is also very good actually model GPT52 but I use it mostly because I have chat GPT subscription which comes in both. to have Chad GPT web which I use a lot for idea like if I have an idea I go to Chad GPT we have a conversation uh so to plan ideas I use Chad GPT and I also sometimes use Codex CLI which is what is your experience with that last one cuz a lot of people ask me on stream like Codex CLI what do you codeex in general like what do you think about Codex in general the model itself cuz a lot of people say it's actually a very nice compelling competitive of cloud code opus 4.5 like it's actually also very Uh yeah, I agree. I experienced the same thing. So GPT specifically 5.2 to codeex I think the model is called it's on par I think with Opus but where cloud code wins is the cloud code CLI experience the the the the tool the tool of cloud code not the model the models can be on par but cloud code terminal experience with plan mode and all of that it's definitely you try the open code uh I did and uh it works I mean it's another tool but I I became such a big fan of cloud code I did explore you mean the CLI yeah the CLI the Open code CLI is in a different is in my opinion a different level. Okay. Like it's really really appealing like visually on the CLI and offers the same features as cloud code CLI plus you can work with various models not only cloud for locals. Okay. I need to try that then. Yeah. And do a video because it will be popular. Yeah sure. So uh I lost my train of thought. Oh yeah. I use codeex uh in the times when cloud code is down entropic sometimes is down or it doesn't perform sometimes like it has has bad days right you know or if I need a second opinion so so I do have codeex cla oo great question here Eric is making a great question okay and you don't have to answer it if you don't want to okay okay the question is the following and this is actually interesting and I do believe a lot of people have this question which is with the development of AI do Do you think as a new developer who has to learn stuff, should I focus on AI workflows and AI development or should I focus on learning a framework like Laravel for example? Is it stuff as [ __ ] The answer is that no one knows the answer. And also uh the answer is both. Because well now you can actually do both because you can use AI workflow learning Laravel along the way. Yeah. Yeah, this is actually what I sometimes what happens for some of my videos. If AI generates some of the code for my demo something, sometimes I'm I learn from that code. So I see from AI something especially with filament it happens. So AI shows me some un unusual ways or function or feature that that I didn't know. So this is how I would do it. Probably I would use AI heavily and learn along the way. Yeah. So this is a great example shed and I can give you a real one that I had last week. So I had to work with Cloudflare. They have a product called it Cloudflare D2 which is a storage for within Cloudflare and I was and so I was not familiar with that service. I was not familiar with how to implement it and I was not familiar how to implement it across various services because they all need to connect with each other and I used cloud code to literally tell me what is this what it does why should I use it instead of this or that. So I went with that route and then I asked okay well now that I want to really use this tell me how do I you know what type of stuff do I need and he told me oh you need this code right here the SDK but you also need this API key which you can fetch from you know so I think you know I would just literally uh put on bold what you just said which is use AI to learn stuff and you just get both good in both basically and also with that you can ask AI to explain what it just it generates code. So I often do that uh myself. So I it generates something and then it's parts I don't understand or I usually don't understand why it did it the certain way because sometimes it makes decision for you and you're not you're not in full control and then I ask why. Mhm. Or you can just uh I've seen someone making a prompt like cloud code generate HTML website with graphics to explain the process what you just did and it can do that. I mean I'm I'm still yet to test it myself on my AI coding channel. This is my plan. But yes, someone just tweeted the prompt like generate HTML website with like arrows and and stuff like that like like graphic uh diagram and it it does that. Of course it takes tokens but yeah cloud code any any actually AI is good at explaining themselves what just happened so you can learn and the main thing uh that you need to still learn you need to still understand the code so if something is generated and you don't understand it and then you just move on this is bad in my opinion so you don't have to write code yourself but you need to understand what just happened and what is the implication for the future for example how would you debug it if something goes wrong how would how would you scale it if you need to what are like so this is this is the learning in 2026 you don't have to learn like Laravel knew how it works uh you but you still at the end of the day you need to understand if you lose the understanding the system uh overview then at some point it will bite you later this is golden golden golden tip chat basically you know this is literally what makes you a good or a bad developer like if you are a person who just prompt AI and you just wait for output and you just go for a coffee and whatever and you don't actually do perfect agent decoding meaning validate the code this is what happens you produce a bad system potentially you don't know what's happening and then it's your fault now if you just validate every single character if you go slowly but surely validating every single produced code by the AI coding agent then you dominate the system and you can apply changes in validate them as well and you will be on it wilas by the way because this guy is a natural on live streaming I don't know what you guys think But for someone who have said that I am better than you on you said that you're better on videos. I'm better on live streams. I don't think so. I think you are natural on live streams too. By the way, we'll see. I will have a talk on stage tomorrow. I'm still I'm still freaking out inside. This would be my Wait, what are you talking about tomorrow? Good question. First talk ever at Laracon. So, so many people were trying to convince me and it finally happens. Okay. Uh I will just reflect on my journey with Laravel. What are the main things I've learned over that framework? Because I've I've seen it all from the very beginning. I talked to a lot of people like yourself back in back in the day. I saw the community growing. I saw I saw Taylor's decisions along the way which went like from being it like it felt bad some of the decisions but then it proven to be right uh over the years. So I will reflect on that reflect on my own journey what I have learned as a content creator and general Laravel journalist as I said and also we'll try to think about the future. So what happens next with Laravel and with uh with content creators. So I think it will be inspirational talk I hope for whoever wants to build something in 10 years overnight success in 10 years like on quote unquote uh in my story maybe I will inspire someone and also reflect on journey of Laravel uh like what did Taylor think in my opinion and how did it materialize and uh yeah so basically inspirational story what can you achieve in 10 15 years something like that nice so it can be like soft talk not too much technical But you'll be awesome. You'll be awesome. Chad, everyone typing Wulas. Thank you, man. Oh, no worries. You are awesome, man. Appreciate Chad. Appreciate it as well. I think we will collaborate more on live streams later in the future. Yeah. Should we collaborate more? Shad, what do you guys think? Shad, I want everyone. We have close to 100 people across all the various platforms. Go all the way down and click like on this video. Also, subscribe to the channel as usual. Hopeless, man. Thank you so much. And enjoy the conference, I guess. See you around. See you around. Yeah, see you on the dance thing on the Heat. Heat.