There’s a moment every developer knows: the spark of a new idea, the itch to start building, and the friction that follows. Setting up a clean Laravel environment, wiring in tools, installing dependencies, crafting a sane directory structure, writing boilerplate steering documents… the overhead adds up. It’s enough to take the shine off that early momentum.
I’ve been building Laravel apps with Kiro for a while now, and something clicked along the way. Every time I tightened up my steering documents, the generated Laravel code looked cleaner and I built faster. Eventually it hit me that all this polish should live in a reusable template instead of in my one off projects. If the foundation was solid from the start, most of the usual setup time just vanished.
That idea became the Kiro Laravel Skeleton, a preconfigured environment designed to turn Kiro’s structured output into professional-grade Laravel code with minimal friction.
I could get a new app started in under two minutes.
Not “two minutes” with a wink. Actual, measurable two minutes.
DDEV requirement
My two-minute starting time assumes you’ve already got DDEV installed. If not, it’s worth adding to your setup. The whole skeleton is tuned around DDEV because it removes the usual “getting Laravel to behave locally” headaches—databases, services, ports, all handled automatically. Once it’s installed, everything in this template springs to life with almost no effort.
The DDEV docs show you how to get it installed. It's quick one-time step.
How the Two-Minute Start Works
Kiro already supercharges your development, but the skeleton adds the layer you actually need when you’re building a real Laravel app. It bundles the time-tested Laravel best practices, trims out the repetitive setup work, and makes sure you’re not starting off on the wrong foot. Instead of wrestling with boilerplate, you get to jump straight into building your app.
The flow is intentionally simple:
- Clone the repository.
- Run
make setupin the Kiro terminal. - Run
make dev.
Pro tip for GitHub users: An alternate way to start
I've also saved the Kiro Laravel Skeleton as a template in GitHub. Instead of cloning the template, as mentioned in step 1, use the GitHub template option instead. Just click Use this template and create a new repo in your GitHub account.
Customizing your app
Once those commands finish, you’re not dealing with config tweaks or environment wiring. You’re ready to start building your app.
Everything behind the scenes—DDEV, Tailwind, the build system, the steering document folder structure, the example specs, and the conventions I refined from real production work—is already baked in.
It feels less like “setting up a project” and more like walking into a workshop where all the tools are laid out, sharpened, and ready.
Your next step is to tell Kiro the type of app you want to build by creating your first spec in Kiro.
Why This Matters
When I showed a friend the steering documents behind my Upload Drive-In project, built with Kiro, he pointed out that my generated code was far clean and organized than his. Same tool, wildly different results. The difference wasn’t magical. It was structure.
The Kiro Laravel Skeleton captures that structure with refined steering documents and a pre-built development environment.
It makes consistency easy.
It makes best practices unavoidable instead of optional.
And it clears the path for what matters: building the actual app.
The Real Goal is Getting to Work
Speed isn’t the point. Momentum is.
When you can go from idea to working environment to building features without stumbling over setup chores, you’re more likely to stay in the creative flow that makes good software happen.
If your next app idea is ready to hatch, the Kiro Laravel Skeleton gets you from blank screen to real work in less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee.
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