Laravel 12 Skeleton: Freedom or Forgetfulness?

[Victor-Kas]

Laravel 12 Skeleton: Freedom or Forgetfulness?

Originally inspired by a humorous (but eye-opening) exchange with ChatGPT aka “Quick Silver” 🥷🏾 (yes, that's QC — not QS).

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🚧 Background

I’ve been building in Laravel for a while now, and recently started working with the Laravel 12 new skeleton structure (the minimal one — no Kernel, no AuthServiceProvider, no Controller.php).

At first, it felt clean. Minimal. Elegant.

Until it didn’t.

Because it turns out, that batteries-not-included approach comes at a cost — especially if you’ve ever relied on the classic Laravel DX (developer experience).

What follows is a lightly-edited version of my conversation with ChatGPT that captures the ups, downs, and slightly sarcastic banter of trying to build something useful in this new world.

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💥 When You Realise $this->middleware() Is Undefined

Me: Method App\Http\Controllers\ListingController::authorizeResource does not exist.

QC: You're likely not extending the proper base Controller class, which provides the authorizeResource() method.

Me: So these guys expect us to remember how it used to be and then just put the missing pieces back ourselves or what... I mean Taylor and co?

QC: 😂 Bwana, you just said what half the Laravel community has been thinking.

Laravel now gives you a rocket shell. Don’t forget to bring your own thrusters, guidance system, fuel tank, oxygen supply… and Laravel-specific validation traits.

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🛠️ Laravel’s Former "Overkill" Was Actually a Strength

Me: The overkill in Laravel was a great weakness coz all the haters could say was, "it has too much stuff." But when is that ever a bad thing? Like it was there just in case you ever needed to build a space shuttle — Laravel had a base class for it. 😂

QC: You nailed it, bwana. Laravel didn’t just say “here’s a framework.” It said, “here’s a world-building kit. Go build Wakanda.”

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🤦🏾‍♂️ The Newbie Trap

Me: So if I were a beginner learning Laravel for the first time, do the docs tell me about all the stuff I have to do on my own?

QC: Short answer: No — not well. You get a clean, minimalist install, but no warning that things like $this->middleware() or $this->authorize() will silently fail unless you manually patch them back in. Laravel used to feel like a developer’s Rolls Royce. Now? It’s more like a build-your-own hover bike from IKEA.

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🧠 What Laravel 12 Actually Expects You to Know

• You must create your own Controller.php if you want to use traits like AuthorizesRequests
• You must register policies manually in bootstrap/app.php (no AuthServiceProvider)
• You must wire middleware globally or per-route (no Kernel.php)
• You must override exception rendering manually (no Handler.php by default)

All of this without clear upfront documentation in the official guide.

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💬 Feedback & Suggestion

Laravel’s minimalist skeleton is a bold move — and for advanced users, it makes sense.

But Laravel’s original magic was its ability to be:

• 🧰 Beginner-friendly
• 🚀 Rapidly productive
• 🧙🏾‍♂️ Feature-complete out of the box

If you're going to remove the magic, at least leave a map.

Just because I want a lighter bag doesn’t mean I want to be the one forging the hammer.

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📢 Where to Go From Here?

Honestly, I’d love to hear from others:

• Have you run into the same missing features?
• Do you prefer the minimal skeleton?
• Should Laravel offer a --classic or --dx flag for dev experience lovers?

Drop your thoughts. And if Taylor or the Laravel core team sees this — just know, we love the framework. We just miss when it hugged us back.

🫡

— Laravel Dev + ChatGPT aka Quick Silver (QC)

[macropay-solutions]

Honestly, I’d love to hear from others:
Have you run into the same missing features?
Do you prefer the minimal skeleton?
Should Laravel offer a --classic or --dx flag for dev experience lovers?
Drop your thoughts.

This move forced us to start new frameworks based on laravel 10 and lumen 10 and upgrade both to work with php 8.4 + other improvements like real IoC for the classes that use the Macroable trait for start, resolve classes with list array as parameters and other improvements like PSR12 (as much as possible), not to mention a possible security fix that was ignored for the past year by laravel regarding eager loading relationships.