What this screen does
The Laravel tab produces the actual application: a complete Laravel project generated from your models, screen map, and options. The left pane is the file explorer of the generated project; the right pane is a code editor showing any file you select.
Typical workflow
- Click Select Laravel Options and choose what the generated app should include. Presets get you started: admin-panel (CRUD screens behind auth), api-only (REST API without views), or full-stack (both). On the Laravel + Vue stack the presets are lean / standard / full.
- Generate the structure, then let the files generate. The explorer fills with the project tree — migrations, models, controllers, views or Vue components, routes, seeders.
- Click through the important files and read them. Generated code is meant to be read: models carry your relations, policies reflect the screen map's roles, views follow your screens.
- Download Archive opens the Download Application modal: the same choices as a showcase deploy (name shown in the app, appearance, prefeed data, documents, role switcher), then a build that packs the last generated application as a complete, installable zip — the same package Export to GitHub pushes.
- Deploy Demo Application puts a temporary, shareable instance of the generated app online without leaving the editor. It appears once you have saved generation options and generated the files.
- Deployment Guide opens step-by-step instructions for getting the archive running on a server, per stack.
Deploy Demo Application
The modal collects what the instance should contain, then reports the address and every sign-in when the run finishes:
- Application — the name shown inside the deployed app (your project title by default), and whether to ship the project documents (specification and every diagram) into its Documents menu.
- Appearance — the skin the app is dressed in, and the dashboard it opens on. Every generated app is styled with erlyc-ui, plain CSS on top of Bootstrap 5.3, and the skin sets its colours, neutrals and density; the package ships it as a stylesheet you can keep editing afterwards. The dashboard is one of three: Modules (your entities as cards, grouped by module, with counts and descriptions), Activity (counts, a per-day chart and the newest records) or Workspace (the journeys for the signed-in role, what needs attention, and a short guide to the app). Everything on it is counted from real rows the signed-in role can see, so a note under a variant says what a project still lacks for it — no status field on any entity, or no User Journeys document yet — and that part of the page is left out rather than filled with something invented.
- Prefeed data — leave the app empty, fill it with free random data, or buy AI-generated records that fit your domain. For the AI source you can reseed to buy a fresh dataset instead of reusing the cached one.
- Roles — the roles from your specification are always seeded, along with one demo sign-in per role. Optionally add the Demo Users role switcher, which puts a role picker in the running app so you can jump between roles without signing out.
When the run finishes the modal shows the URL, the administrator login, and one login per role. They are shown once — save them. Instances are wiped automatically after a while; deploying again gives you a fresh address.
Download Application and Export to GitHub
Both take the same options as the deploy modal — the Appearance fieldset included, so a package can be rebuilt in a different skin or on a different dashboard without regenerating any code — and produce the same package: a standalone Laravel application with composer.json, the project documents as Markdown under docs/, the seed files, an .env.example carrying every deploy key, the erlyc-ui stylesheets under public/css/ (with erlyc-ui/theme.css left for you to edit — every value listed and commented out, no build step), and a README that lists the sign-ins seeding creates (the administrator from .env, one login per role). The download builds on the server and offers a link when done; the export pushes the same files to your repository. Neither regenerates code. Choosing AI-generated data reuses the cached dataset for free and spends credits only for a fresh one (reseed, none cached yet, or the models changed since); if generation fails, the package falls back to free data and says so.
The exported repository is ready for Laravel Cloud. Install its command-line tool once with composer global require laravel/cloud-cli, then run cloud ship inside a clone of the repository: it signs you in, creates the application from the repository, lets you add a database and set environment variables, and deploys. The package's README spells out the build and deploy commands to check, the variables to set, and the one-off php artisan db:seed --force that creates the sign-ins. Your Cloud account needs a Git connection that can see the repository.
Deploy to Laravel Cloud
On paid plans the Laravel tab also carries Deploy to Laravel Cloud: one button that builds the package, pushes it to a repository in your own GitHub account (connect GitHub first through Export to GitHub), then creates, configures, deploys and checks an application in your own Laravel Cloud organization. Paste a Cloud API token once (Organization settings → API tokens, with the Applications, Environments, Deployments and Commands permissions); it is stored encrypted like the GitHub token, and the credentials vault guards it the same way. Your Cloud account must be able to see the repository, so connect GitHub in Cloud and grant its GitHub App access to the repository.
Two modes are offered. Demo creates no database: the app runs on SQLite that Cloud seeds while it builds the image, which is enough for a preview at no cost beyond compute that scales to zero, and it means the data is reset on every deploy and can be lost when the app sleeps. Real App — a managed database on your Cloud account — is coming next. The run's steps show in the window (build, push, create, configure, deploy, verify); when it finishes you get the laravel.cloud address, the administrator login and one login per role, shown once. Deploying the project again redeploys the same application, so the address stays; the package options (name, appearance, prefeed data, documents, role switcher) are the ones the other modals use.
Examples & tips
- Generation bills credits in proportion to the number of files. Downloading and exporting never bill for code: they package the last generated state, so regenerate after changing options.
- The generated app's navigation grouping and role access come from the screen map; if a menu looks wrong, the fix is usually there, not in the options.
- The code is yours: download it, version it, and modify it like any hand-written Laravel project.