Every launch directory I've ever used had the same problem: I couldn't tell which projects were still alive.
Product Hunt, GitHub trending, the dozens of "awesome lists" — they all have their place. But when I wanted to see what indie Laravel developers were actually shipping, I kept hitting the same wall: beautiful cards linking to apps that no longer exist. Directories rot because listing something dead costs nothing.
So I built Shipped — a launch registry for Laravel projects where every entry is verified to be actually running. It's free, and it lives at larashipped.laravel.cloud.
What it does
The idea is simple. You record your project, write a short release story, and point Shipped at your live *.laravel.cloud URL. Before anything goes public, Shipped checks that the app is genuinely up: it resolves DNS, probes the origin without credentials, refuses off-origin redirects, and matches the Cloud slug against the live hostname. If the check passes, you get a publishable launch page — and a "LIVE ON CLOUD" badge you can drop into your README.
Then verification doesn't stop. Shipped rechecks every launch daily. If your app goes down, your card goes private — automatically.
That last part is deliberate. A registry full of dead links is worse than no registry at all. I'd rather your launch page disappear than mislead someone.
What it doesn't do
It doesn't verify that you own the Cloud organization, and it doesn't score your code. URL-backed verification answers exactly one question honestly: "is this thing actually live right now?" That tradeoff is the product. (I wrote about the security details of that decision in a separate post.)
Why I care about this
Shipping side projects is lonely. Half the motivation dies in the gap between "deployed" and "anyone noticed." A verified registry gives launches a home people can trust, and gives the rest of us a reason to click.
What's next
Scheduled release notes, follows, and a private activity feed are already in the works — the roadmap is driven by early users, so they get heard first.
The ask
If you've shipped anything on Laravel Cloud — a SaaS, a tool, a weekend experiment — add your launch and grab the badge. It's open source, too: github.com/jvbalcita/shipped.
And if you haven't shipped on Cloud yet, I'd still love your take:
Would you trust a registry that rechecks launches daily and unpublishes dead ones? What would make you submit your own project — or what would stop you?
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