Overview

My opinionated, reusable base for a Laravel 13 + Inertia v2 + React (TypeScript) + Tailwind v4 application, tuned for AI-assisted development and Hostinger shared hosting. This project is the reference I copy from when starting anything new — the core setup and the best practices around it, nothing app-specific.

It documents the skeleton and the conventions, not a finished product: how the project is scaffolded, how data flows, how it's linted, how it deploys, and the AI-tooling docs that make an agent productive in the repo from minute one.

The stack at a glance

Layer Choice Version
Framework Laravel 13 (PHP 8.3+)
Auth scaffold Laravel Breeze (React + Inertia + TS) 2.x
Transport Inertia.js (Laravel + React adapters) v2
UI React + TypeScript 18 / 5
Styling Tailwind CSS (@theme tokens, @tailwindcss/vite) v4
Routing helper Ziggy v2
DTOs spatie/laravel-data + spatie/laravel-typescript-transformer v4 / v3
Database PostgreSQL (MySQL is a drop-in alternative) 15+
AI tooling Laravel Boost (+ Pail, Pint) v2
JS quality ESLint (Airbnb) + Prettier; tsc --strict ESLint 9
Deploy GitHub Actions → FTP + SSH (Hostinger) —

The core principle: one data-flow contract

Every request follows the same path. Backend owns logic, validation, and authorization; Inertia is a thin transport; React is UI only.

flowchart LR
    Route --> Controller
    Controller -->|validates| FormRequest
    Controller -->|authorizes| Policy
    Controller -->|delegates| SA["Service / Action"]
    SA -->|returns| DTO["DTO (#[TypeScript])"]
    DTO -->|Inertia::render| Page["React Page (typed props)"]
    DTO -.->|artisan typescript:transform| Types["generated.d.ts"]
    Types -.-> Page

The DTO is the single source of truth: it is both the Inertia payload and the origin of the frontend's TypeScript types. Change a DTO, regenerate types, and the compiler tells you exactly what to fix on the frontend.

Each hop has one job:

Layer Owns Never does
FormRequest Validation — one per write action Business logic
Policy Authorization — one per resource ($this->authorize('update', $post)) Validation
Service Business logic shared across a feature Rendering, request access
Action One reusable operation (CreatePostAction), callable from controller, command, or job alike Growing a second method — that's a service
DTO The response shape Exposing raw models

Tip — Extract an Action when a service method gets reused across entry points (web + artisan + job). Don't convert everything — services remain the default home for feature logic.

What's in this guide

Page Covers
Create the project Scaffolding, packages, directory layout, dev commands
Database — PostgreSQL DB choice, migration & seeder best practices
DTOs & TypeScript The typed contract between Laravel and React
Frontend — React & Tailwind JS structure, Tailwind v4, Airbnb ESLint + Prettier, camelCase↔snake_case boundary
AI-driven dev docs Boost, AGENTS.md/CLAUDE.md, copilot instructions, downloadable skills
Environment & config Nulled .env.example, seeding.php, why SSH never goes in config
Remote commands The remote:cmds artisan tool (nulled copy attached)
Deployment GitHub Actions workflow copies (FTP + SSH)
.htaccess examples Root + public/ hardened Apache configs for Hostinger
Workspace & gitignore .code-workspace excludes and the base .gitignore
Feature flow & docs The .docs/feature/ brief → plan → implementation rhythm, tooling links
Resources The reading list — docs, educators, repos, patterns & anti-patterns
SEO config/seo.php, indexability switch, robots/sitemap, OG share image, JSON-LD

Note — The Hostinger/hPanel mechanics (enabling SSH, generating deploy keys, adding GitHub secrets) live in the sibling GitHub Actions → Hostinger project. This guide links to it rather than repeating it.

Next