Doing some late nite work on new package. Surprised no-one tackled this one yet 🙂

Also, I’m an adult and like to be treated as such, so:
❌ no thumbnails with funny faces.
❌ enthusiasm is fine, but no hype-hype-hype, over-energetic stuff
❌ no clickbaity stuff like “15 tips that will TOTALLY blow your mind.”

Such content has an audience too but maybe I'm too old to be part of it 🙂

What are the best YouTube channels and newsletters for AI development?

I like watching people who:
✅ can explain concepts in a clear, calm, friendly way.
✅ are enthusiastic, but also honest/critical at the same time
✅ actually use all of it in their own stuff

Our hackathon project: Live at Spatie

Post with more details:
spatie.be/blog/our-ha...

A Slack conversation with Tim requesting pop-punk songs and Paolo confirming the queue with specific band names for an office-friendly vibe.

The nicest part might be the Slack bot.

🌈 We exposed an MCP server with laravel/mcp, plugged it into OpenClaw that lives on our Slack, and now you can ask the bot things like “queue In Rainbows” and it just does it.

A white device with LEDs and ports is connected on a desk alongside a black speaker, suggesting a tech setup for music streaming.

A music player interface shows current track "Madhuvan," song queue, contributors, and top artists, designed for collaborative music selection.

Shows a music track list featuring "Never Gonna Give You Up" by Rick Astley, next up is "Sandstorm" by Darude, with a DJ request noted.

We built a fun hackathon project at Spatie: Live at Spatie.

It's a small Laravel + React wrapper around Owntone that lets everyone in the office search for songs, add them to one shared queue, see what's playing, and control the music.

Hey non-Big Techies,

I’m looking for a way to connect my CalDAV calendar to Le Chat/ Mistral. Ideally it can answer questions about availabilities etc.

But I’m not a very technical person so I’m stuck. Any suggestions?

Attach PDFs Directly to Mailables in laravel-pdf 2.6.0 - Laravel News The laravel-pdf package adds the Attachable contract to PdfBuilder, letting you pass generated PDFs directly to Laravel mailables and notifications without saving them to disk first.

Attach PDFs Directly to Mailables in laravel-pdf 2.6.0 laravel-news.com/attach-pdfs-...

Agent skill | Documentation | Flare The Flare agent skill gives AI coding agents the knowledge to use the [Flare CLI](/docs/flare/general/using-the-cli) to interact with the Flare API. When installed, agents like Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex can access your error data, performance...

Some more info on the Flare CLI:
flareapp.io/docs/flare/...

Try it out using our free trial.

More cool stuff in our pipeline coming soon!

A coding error report details a JavaScript reference issue within a component, suggesting a fix for a frontend problem.

Next to PHP/Laravel exceptions, Flare tracks JavaScript errors too.

💪 Super handy for letting AI fix frontend errors (JS/Vue/React) using the Flare CLI/skill.

Introducing TypeScript Transformer 3 Three years in the making, TypeScript Transformer 3 is finally here!

Blog post here for anyone curious: rubenvanassche.com/introducing-...

A bunch of really nice new features!

Freek Van der Herten writes about Laravel, PHP and AI. Co-owner of Spatie, maintainer of 300+ open source packages with over 2 billion downloads.

📬 Want to get it in your mailbox? Subscribe here: freek.dev/newsletter

🙌 Already subscribed? Write a short recommendation here: freek.dev/newsletter/...

Draft section shows "freek.dev newsletter #200" highlighted, with previous edition #199 listed below in a campaign management interface.

Later today, I'll send out edition number 200 🥳 of my newsletter.

This landed in PR #327.

PR: github.com/spatie/lara...
Docs: spatie.be/docs/larave...

laravel-pdf v2.6.0 adds support for using a PdfBuilder directly as a Laravel mail attachment.

Build your PDF with `Pdf::view(...)` and pass it straight to `attach($pdf)` in a mail message or notification. There is also a `toMailAttachment()` method on the builder.

dotfiles/config/claude/skills/speeding-up-laravel-tests/SKILL.md at main · freekmurze/dotfiles My personal dotfiles. Contribute to freekmurze/dotfiles development by creating an account on GitHub.

🚀 Created a little AI skill to improve the speed of Laravel tests.

github.com/freekmurze/...

Logging for Laravel & PHP | Flare Cut straight to the logs that matter. Real-time logging with deep context, powerful filters, and instant search, built for Laravel & PHP.

Sign up for early access here: flareapp.io/platform/lo...

🪵🪓 Logging is coming to Flare

A blog post draft discusses a significant project involving rewriting a popular PHP package from scratch, highlighting challenges faced.

My colleague @rubenvanassche did some fine work on one of his most used Spatie packages.

More info soon!

Slack interface displaying a conversation about the album "Singles" by Future Islands, featuring a woman's image in a red striped dress.

🎵 Recently, we added OpenClaw bot on our Slack (we named it Paolo Alto), one of it's abilities is that it control the music we play at the office. Very nice!

We'll publish a blog post later this weeks on how it works internally

Prove that you're human I don't know about you, but these days, when somebody sends me a link to a new product they've built, I'm immediately skeptical. I'm running through a mental checklist: Is this thing dependable? Is it secure? Are these people going to be around in a year? Are they shipping regular

We do the same for there-there.app

Just wrote a few thoughts on it:
marketingfordevelopers.com/lessons/pro...

User interface for the app "Cogito" highlights its creator, Fabrizio Rinaldi, suggesting a personal touch that builds user trust.

Trying out a new app, and what immediately gives me confidence is that I see the name of a real human there, with a link to their track record.

This hints to me it's not AI slop, but somebody is proud of the app. This builds trust.

AI-powered helpdesk for support teams | There There A helpdesk with AI that handles the repetitive tickets so your team can focus on the ones that matter.

You can view our homepage here: there-there.app

Don't forget to apply for early access while you're there there 🥁.

Case study: Freek and His Team Launch a New App Justin does a live teardown of the landing page for There There (https://there-there.app/), a new AI-powered help desk from Spatie in Belgium. Practical take...

The incredible @mijustin did a teardown of the homepage of my upcoming SaaS.

🧠 TLDR: in the age of AI, you don't want to create an anonymous website, but show who is actually behind the tool/service to build trust.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5M...

Thank you!

Graph displays the installation statistics of a software package over time, showing a steady increase in usage.

I guess y'all like that new major version we recently published

In the age of AI, the way to stand out is to prove to potential customers that they can trust you.

How? Put real human faces on your product. Have a picture of your team! Talk about your experience.

I think @freek.bsky.social's team nailed this with their new app:
there-there.app

AI-powered helpdesk for support teams | There There A helpdesk with AI that handles the repetitive tickets so your team can focus on the ones that matter.

Now in closed beta, you can request beta access here:
there-there.app

We have been using it internally for a while now and are polishing the small stuff. I'll talk a lot about that small stuff soon. 🙂

Tech stack:
- Laravel
- Inertia 3
- Tailwind
- The Laravel AI package
- A gazillion Spatie packages

A helpdesk interface displays support tickets with details about issues, assignments, and urgent tags, emphasizing efficient customer service.

Now is a good time to share that I'm working on the next Spatie product: There There.

It's a helpdesk where AI surfaces context and drafts replies, so your team responds faster and every customer gets a thoughtful answer.