Craftly: Building the AI Forge for PHP
Everyone building AI developer tools is targeting JavaScript. VS Code extensions, AI pair programmers, CLI scaffolding tools — they all default to TypeScript, Next.js, or Node. Meanwhile, PHP powers 77% of the web and gets almost none of that attention.
That's the gap Craftly is built to close.
What Craftly Does
Craftly is an AI agent platform that takes a plain-language description of a web application and generates a production-ready Laravel or WordPress codebase — live, in front of the customer, in under 5 minutes.
This isn't code autocomplete or a snippet generator. It's a full agentic pipeline: the AI analyses the requirements, scaffolds the application structure, creates routes, models, controllers, views, and database migrations, then serves a live preview as it builds. The customer watches their idea take shape in real time.
Why PHP?
After nearly a decade of PHP backend work — from Symfony and Laravel projects at Copernicus GmbH to client builds for DACH businesses — one thing is consistently true: the PHP ecosystem is huge, its developers are experienced, and its tools are excellent. Laravel in particular is a joy to build with. But the AI tooling gap is real.
When a German Mittelstand company wants a web application, they often need it on a hosting plan they already own — Ionos, Hetzner, Strato — running PHP. They don't need Vercel and TypeScript. They need Laravel. Craftly is built for exactly that market.
The Technical Approach
Craftly's pipeline uses an agentic architecture where each stage — requirements analysis, file scaffolding, code generation, preview serving — is handled by a dedicated agent with specialised context. The result is higher quality than a single large prompt because each agent is focused on one concern.
The core is built on top of the Anthropic Claude API. The frontend is a real-time streaming interface where every generated file appears as it's written. No waiting for a "done" state — you see the whole build process.
Current Status
Craftly is in active development. The Laravel generation pipeline is working end-to-end. The WordPress pipeline is in progress. We're accepting beta waitlist signups now — if you're a Laravel developer, a PHP shop, or a DACH digital agency, we'd love your feedback.