This blog post is Human-Centered Content: Written by humans for humans.

Remember when doing laundry meant scrubbing clothes by hand on a washboard, then hanging everything outside to dry and hoping it didn’t rain? You probably don’t because the washing machine was already invented.

Laravel Ralph is the washing machine for Laravel development. You describe what you want, press go and let the machine handle the scrubbing.

Wait, Why “Ralph”?

The name comes from the “Ralph Wiggum technique” — an iterative AI development methodology where (much like the beloved Simpsons character Ralph Wiggum himself) the AI just keeps trying. And trying. And trying. Until it finally gets things right.

Ralph is a system where the AI can see what it did, learn from the results and keep improving. It’s like you’re telling AI to grade its own homework and redo the problems it got wrong.

How It Actually Works

Laravel Ralph sets up an automated feedback loop that’s very simple in concept but surprisingly powerful in practice. It solves the issue of managing context windows and the tedium of planning the implementation steps for a feature.

Here’s the basic flow:

1. You describe what you want in plain language
2. Claude generates the PRD with features and acceptance criteria
3. Ralph takes over, reading the prompt and reviewing any previous work
4. It implements a feature and writes tests for it
5. Tests run automatically via composer test
6. Results get logged so Claude can see what happened
7. Rinse and repeat until all tests pass

The template ships with two modes: ralph.sh for full autonomous mode (defaults to 50 iterations if you don’t specify — go grab lunch) and ralph_once.sh for when you want to keep a closer eye on things.

The Philosophy: You Design, AI Implements

Much of our time used to spent looking at a kanban board, picking a task, completing it, looking for the next one, completing that, etc. etc. Laravel Ralph positions you as the product designer and lets AI do the grunt work.

You might tell Claude: “Users should be able to reset their password via email.” From there, Claude generates a proper PRD with features and acceptance criteria. Then Ralph picks it up and handles the implementation — controllers, migrations, tests, etc. It handles the entire sprint.

You’re not writing specs. You’re not micromanaging implementation. You’re describing what you want the product to do, and AI handles the translation from idea to working code.

But you don’t have to hand over the keys to the precious semicolons just yet. If the sprint is for a particularly niche problem, you can review the work between each iteration. Claude is still doing everything, but you can keep a close eye on what it produces.

Getting Started

1. Clone the repo
2. Describe what you want to Claude and let it generate your PRD
3. Run ./ralph.sh
4. Watch the magic happen (or go do literally anything else)

That’s it. The PROMPT.md file already contains Claude’s instructions, and progress.txt logs what’s been attempted. You don’t need to touch either unless you want to customize the behavior.

When Should You Use This?

Laravel Ralph shines when you have:

• Clear acceptance criteria (even if implementation is fuzzy)
• Standard Laravel patterns (CRUD operations, API endpoints, typical web app stuff)
• Time to let it cook (the autonomous loop needs room to iterate)

It’s probably not your best bet for highly custom integrations, novel algorithms or anything requiring deep domain expertise that can’t be expressed in acceptance criteria.

Wrapping Up

“Things are changing” is a sentiment we’ve heard over and over the past couple years. But honestly? They have changed and this is the next shift. We’re moving from “write code, then test” to “define outcomes, let AI figure out the implementation.”

This doesn’t replace developers. It changes what we focus on. Less time wrestling with boilerplate, more time on architecture, user experience and the genuinely tricky problems that require human judgment.

So don’t fret! We’re still necessary, at least for developing production-ready, robust apps. You just have another tool at your disposal for making your development life easier.

Try It Yourself

The template is open source and ready to play with. Clone it and drop it in your project. Then tell Claude to update the PRD for a new feature, run Ralph’s script and see what happens. Worst case, you learn something. Best case, you finish your sprint early.

Check it out here!