From powerful new tools to thought-provoking talks and future-facing features, here’s what we took away from this year’s Laravel Live.
Last week, some of the Filter team attended Laravel Live London 2025, a two-day conference full of ideas, product announcements and lively conversations with fellow developers. With talks covering everything from cutting-edge tools to everyday developer challenges, it was a packed schedule with plenty to take in.
Here’s a look at some of the highlights.
One of the most talked-about tools was Cursor, an AI coding assistant designed to help with writing and refactoring code. It stood out for its speed and how effectively it could support things like writing unit tests and laying out feature logic. There was also discussion around the importance of using it with care, especially in large or complex codebases.
InertiaJS v2 also stood out with some great new features:
Nightwatch was another highlight, offering detailed error monitoring with rich reporting. It provides insights into when and where issues occur and includes planned integrations with tools like Asana.
Laravel Cloud, a new hosting platform, was introduced as a simple way to deploy Laravel apps, built on Kubernetes but designed to hide the complexity. It promises 30-second deploys from repo to live, which definitely generated buzz.
The Cursor and MCP talks nailed how to make testing and API docs way less painful.
Development Team, Filter
While there was plenty to be excited about, a few sessions raised more questions than answers.
Filament 4 offers a clean way to build admin panels with Livewire, but it comes with trade-offs. Its structure can limit flexibility and would likely require major changes to existing frontends.
Talks on async PHP and generics were technically interesting, but felt like a stretch for many typical PHP projects. Async code involves significant changes and generics, while useful, aren’t natively supported and can add complexity.
There was also a strong message from one speaker about Kubernetes unless it’s solving a very specific problem, it may not be worth the overhead. Tools like Laravel Cloud are emerging as simpler alternatives.
And then there was Laravel Hardware, a playful look at using PHP to control physical devices, like buttons or lights. While entertaining and technically impressive, it felt more experimental than practical.
It was an interesting mix of current practices / use cases and insight into the future of the framework & community.
Development Team, Filter
Beyond tools and frameworks, some of the most memorable sessions focused on development culture and team health.
One standout talk, “How to Destroy a Software Engineer”, explored what harms developer productivity the most:
It was a clear reminder of the value of protecting deep focus and supporting developer wellbeing.
Another session looked at the issue of flaky tests that fail inconsistently and often without clear reasons. The advice was to treat unreliable tests as a warning sign. Rather than leave them in place, it’s better to rewrite or remove them so they serve their purpose.
Laravel Live brought together a great mix of new ideas, honest reflections and innovative tools. It was a refreshing couple of days for anyone working in the Laravel space and a chance to see where the community is heading next.
If you were at the event too, we’d love to hear your highlights or if you’d like to speak to us about your next digital project, fill in the form below!
Marketing Manager
Joy is Filter’s voice to the outside world, developing our content and marketing strategies, and communicating the great work that we do to the widest audience. Joy manages our website content, social media channels, resource centre, the UnFILTERed video podcast series, our Enterprise Guide eBook series and every aspect of our marketing activity.
