The Laravel Podcast

In the Season 7 finale, Matt Stauffer talks with Sam Sappenfield, senior field marketing manager and two-time Laravel team member, about her unlikely path from athlete to journalism grad to marketer to Laravel's first dedicated events hire.They get into why she left, why she came back, and how Laracon US talks on agentic programming turned her into a builder. Sam walks through shipping a Laracon photos app on Laravel Cloud, a Stripe-and-Printful generative art t-shirt store, and why building ruined HubSpot for her. Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferSam Sappenfield on X - https://x.com/samsappenfield1Sam’s Website - https://thesambrain.com/Laracon Photos - https://laracon.us/photosBuilding Ruined Hubspot for Me - https://thesambrain.com/building-ruined-hubspot-for-meGenerative Art Shirts - https://your-art-on-shirt.laravel.cloud/designSolo - https://soloterm.com/Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelLaravel Website - https://laravel.com/Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoringLaracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. In this episode, Matt Stauffer is joined by two of his oldest friends in the community — Michael Dyrynda and Jake Bennett, co-hosts of the Laravel News Podcast — for a Laracon-fueled catch-up that starts with golf, soccer, and adult swim lessons before turning to the framework.They dig into the Laracon US highlights that stuck with them: rediscovering the joy of building "silly software," using AI as an educator for your own codebase, and the new releases they're most excited to ship — first-party image manipulation, the Laravel AI SDK's OpenAI-compatible provider, OG tag management, and Blade support in Pint.Along the way, Matt talks rescue work and Laravel 5 apps in the wild, and Michael pulls back the curtain on what it actually takes to run Laracon AU.Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferMichael Dyrynda on X - http://x.com/michaeldyryndaMicheal Dyrynda on GitHub - http://github.com/michaeldyrynda  Michael Dyrynda’s Website - dyrynda.com.auJake Bennett on X - http://x.com/jacobbennettJake Bennett on GitHub -  https://gitHub.com/jacobbennettJake Bennet’s Website - http://jakebennett.net/  Christina Martinez's Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/2oUu9-jW6mg?si=rjckBIfr2wVCUKQAMatt Stauffer’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/au9bIQsrh8k?si=BNJBMFIGFZR5oUqJBoom Party - https://boomparty.party/Laracon AU - https://laracon.au/Laravel News Podcast - https://podcast.laravel-news.com/Mateus Guimaraes’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/Wb8qsfP2sJc?si=zSKc_EeVTv9wDA91Will King’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/TlQm1fiQUZs?si=Dk2uZBgBHRcawsUCKent C. Dodd’s Laracon Talk - https://youtu.be/zZPV_ggx5F8?si=88JRgSZ518lQhhp_http://itch.io  - https://itch.io/Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelLaravel Website - https://laravel.com/Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoringLaracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell for a post-Laracon debrief covering the biggest announcements across the Laravel framework, AI tooling, and Laravel Cloud.They walk through the new goodies — the LSP, Artisan Doctor, and CPX (think NPX for Composer) — before digging into how AI is reshaping the framework itself, from human-in-the-loop tooling in the AI SDK to treating AI as a framework primitive. On the Cloud side, Taylor breaks down managed queues, sub-second scale-to-zero for everything, and why he'd turn it on for every app.The conversation closes on a bigger idea: Laravel as a multilingual, full-stack application framework — not just a PHP one — and what that means for the community it's about to welcome. Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferTaylor on X - https://x.com/taylorotwellLaravel Updates from Laracon US 2026  — Taylor Otwell - https://www.youtube.com/live/0P-VMS7JMQY?si=_kp2ob_OMmo8PSF6&t=24379Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelLaravel Website - https://laravel.com/Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - Performance Monitoring for Laravel & PHP | FlareLaracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Aaron Francis — just days before his first day — to explore his journey from programmer and entrepreneur to VP of Marketing and Community at Laravel.They trace his winding path from big-four CPA to developer, PlanetScale, and two and a half years of independence, then unpack the hard decision to "go to the mothership." Aaron lays out his strategic vision: protect the artisan core while expanding to the larger circle of pragmatic builders, and make Laravel's engineering credibility legible to the outside world.It's a candid look at how his diverse experiences shape his approach to community and growth — and why lifting Laravel's reputation raises the tide for the whole community. Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferAaron Francis on X - https://x.com/aarondfrancisMostly Technical Podcast - https://mostlytechnical.com/Laravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelLaravel Website - https://laravel.com/Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Flare by Spatie - http://flareapp.io and Performance Monitoring - http://flareapp.io/performance-monitoringLaracon AU - https://laracon.au

The Laravel Podcast is brought to you by Tighten, your friendly neighborhood Laravel experts. Check us out at tighten.com and also by other sponsors you will hear about later in the episode. In this episode, Matt Stauffer sits down with Taylor Otwell, creator and CEO of Laravel, just days before Laracon in Boston, and gets into why Laravel has become such a natural fit for building with AI coding agents.They talk through Laravel Boost, the value of an opinionated, “batteries included” framework when agents are writing the code, and how “vibe-coding” platforms tend to hit a wall that Laravel doesn’t. Along the way, Taylor makes a striking claim: the big shift in programming has already happened. Most of us aren’t writing code by hand anymore, and the open question is just how much we review versus trust.It’s also a candid conversation about craft, deleting experiments without guilt, and Taylor leaning back into being unapologetically himself.Matt Stauffer on X - https://x.com/mattstaufferTaylor on X - https://x.com/taylorotwellVoxacon - https://voxacon.laravel.cloud/Kayla Helmick on the Laravel Blog - https://laravel.com/cloud/customer-stories/how-a-non-technical-built-an-app-with-laravel-cloud-claudeLaravel Twitter - https://twitter.com/laravelLaravel Website - https://laravel.com/Laracon US 2026 - https://laracon.us/Tighten Website - https://tighten.com/Suggestion Box - https://suggest.gg/laravelpodcast----- Editing and transcription sponsored by Tighten - https://tighten.com/Big thanks to the companies that support the show:Honeybadger - https://www.honeybadger.io/for/laravel/Laravel - Laracon US and Laravel CloudLaracon AU - https://laracon.au