In conversation with Taylor Otwell: The India Comeback - Hosted by Vishal Rajpurohit

We must share! We must share! We must share! We must share! We must share! We must share! Are you guys ready? Yeah! This is power! This is power! This is power! Are you ready for the Saturday? Yeah! Are you excited? Yeah! Good morning, everyone! Good morning!

All right, everyone. It's truly said that what happens at Laracon only happens at Laracon. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening from all the people all around the world. केम छो मजामा जैसे कृष्णा प्रणाम सस्त्रिया काल अस्सलाम वालेकुम। I hope everyone is doing good. If I am audible, I hope I am audible. You can write down in comment if everything all good. Can you hear me properly? How is the josh? Josh is always high. The energy is high because today is the special day. Yes. So today is gonna be a very special livestream. Welcome to the livestream of Laracon India 2026, a special, amazing moment which everyone were waiting for. And we thought that how about we make it more special before the Laracon gets started. And today's, uh, today's livestream is very special. It's not just about AI or people or about framework or about programming language. Today's livestream is all about people, community, and belief. Because someone started back in 10, 11 years ago with a small problem statement, just as a fun project without ever vision, without ever, without even having any roadmap, out of curiosity. And that became Laravel, which is nowadays used by millions of people, which only did not create a programming language or a framework. It created careers, opportunities, global ecosystem, and everything all surrounded by that. So today the creator itself is joining us not just to talk about code, but about the journey, about the mindset, about the community, about the technology, and especially about his thoughts that what he feels that gonna be the future all about surrounded by wherever we are. On top of that, we're going to talk about Laracon India, which is not just a conference for everybody. It is just a collaborative— we call it like a big family altogether. So there will be a lot of chat around that as well. So whatever the place you are, whenever you— from where you are joining, hold in tight, keep asking questions, be part of our chat. With that warm note, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, please welcome One and only, our own favorite, Taylor Otwell in the house.

Hey, how are you?

Hi, Taylor.

Hey, how are you?

Well, I'm doing good. It's 9:30 PM here. The winter had just started. The weather is perfect, especially for your travel, upcoming travel.

Yeah, yeah. How about you?

How is weather there?

Uh, good today.

Yeah.

Good today. Supposed to get really cold, but today it's sunny and yeah, not too bad.

Yeah.

You know what? I every day meet you and I every day keep talking to you because you are standing exactly near to my desk. Remember this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Very cool. I have one of those too.

Yeah.

So before we start, I would like to— because since you are coming to Laracon India, you are coming to Gujarat. We say it whenever we meet. So you have to repeat exactly after me. That is one of a local language. So I'll ask you, kem cho?

Kento?

Try again.

Kem cho?

Kento? Yes.

One last time. That means kem cho. That means how are you? So you have to say kem cho?

Kento?

Yes, perfect. And the answer should be majama. Majama. That means I am so happy. Yeah, perfect. So, so my first question, like, let's go back to the memories of the first Laracon, which was so special. So what is the first thing which comes in your mind when we talk about Laracon India 2023?

Oh wow, yeah, uh, pretty big party, you know, lots of energy. I think everyone was, um, excited to like have, um, you know, so many cool Laravel people in India. Um, you know, I was there, but also lots of other, like, you know, popular Laravel developers, and just, like, learn from everyone, meet everyone, hear what everyone's working on. There's always a lot of energy at Laracon, you know.

Yeah. So is there any specific memory in your mind which is still stuck in your brain, like, whenever you think of that Pops up.

Oh, probably the dancing. Yeah, like the was it the garba dancing?

Like people were holding you upstairs and you were just like yeah yeah yeah.

Yeah, pretty crazy.

Did you ever expected that such thing can happen with you?

Like no boy. No no no no not at all.

Yeah, so I I also remember. The moment when we asked Kaneko because he always want that fire pan, and then we talked of your name.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah, that was crazy.

It was it was fire pan. Like you just had to open your mouth and the the fire pan was there.

Yeah, that was crazy.

Yeah. So so just like what are like three things which comes in your mind whenever You talk about or you think about India?

Um, you know, everyone's very friendly in India. Plus, I love Indian food. So that's always good. And there's just always lots of energy, you know, people want to learn about Laravel, they want to build things, they want to ship things. It's just a very energetic community, you know, and very like lots of good energy. And so I always love that about India because like, I feel like I always want to build things and ship things. And I think the Indian community does too. So I think we're very similar in that way.

Yeah, perfect.

I still remember when you came to Laracon India first, we started because I knew that it's your first visit to India. So I didn't want to try out all spicy things. So I started with spicy level 1. Then you said it's not spicy. Then started with spicy level 2. You still felt it's not spicy. By that time, it was already the second day of Laracon. Then we went to a place which was where you, you know, you get all different type of varieties. I asked that guy that please bring more spicy level and still you are not happy. And that finally it made it.

That's funny. You know what, Jess from Laravel, she likes really spicy stuff, like spicier than me.

Yeah, that's true. So, uh, about upcoming, uh, Laracon India, what is the, the thing which excites you the more, especially for your visit in India this time?

Uh, just seeing everyone again, you know. Um, it's been a couple years, so it'd be good to like reconnect with everyone I met, uh, the first time, plus meet some new people. Um, and of course get to see some of the Laravel team as well. I think we have Nuno there. Uh, Jess is there. Anyone else from the Laravel team?

Yeah, I think Jess is there. Nuno is there. I think there are a couple of more as well, but it's a good line of speakers. Like I can say that one of the strongest line of speakers we ever had.

Yeah.

So yeah, very cool.

So yeah. So, uh, in today's talk, uh, Taylor, we will talk about all different points about like your journey, your entrepreneurship mindset, Your views about community, your views about AI. Also, what if Taylor was not the creator of Laravel? So fun part of yours. Also about work-life balance. You know, there is an area where a lot of places where we get to know about what we are building, what we are shipping. But there is other side of Taylor, which always inspires people about who is Taylor behind the wall. So that is one of the areas where I want that we talk about that also surrounded by the areas of community and all about upcoming features of Laravel as well. So the first question starts from your journey. Everyone thinks that Taylor just became the creator of Laravel just by being into the programming world. But I know that how your journey started from your childhood days. especially from the MUD stories. And then from there you became the creator of Laravel. And then still in the time of AI, when you ask Cloud Code that who you think should have written this code and the AI itself told your name.

Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy.

Yeah. So I would like to hear about how it started from your childhood until today, something like A story which we all would like to hear about you.

Yeah, um, when I was growing up, I was really always interested in computers and, and tech and really the internet especially. Um, I remember I got my first computer at home when I was probably like maybe 10 years old, and, um, we got the internet, and of course it was very slow at the time, but I was just very interested in Being able to create your own website and like put it out into the world so that anyone can access it, right? Any— even someone in India.

Yeah.

So at first I would start building websites about just like things I liked as a kid, like video games or Pokémon or, you know, whatever, whatever I was interested in at the time. And it was just like basic HTML. And, you know, you probably remember the old days of like building websites.

Notepad++.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then once I got older, like in college and university and stuff, is when I first saw PHP actually. My classmate suggested that we use it for a project. I had never used it before, but he said that it was easy to learn, easy to use, so we would use it for this project. Great, we did the project. I graduated from university and became a .NET developer. But when I wanted to build side projects, I remembered that, you know, back in college I had used PHP and it was pretty easy. So that's why I started using PHP for all of my side projects.

Yep.

And then I needed a framework to build these projects really quickly. And so I created a framework. And at the time, I didn't really— I wasn't really planning to like create a big popular framework. You know, I was mainly building a framework for myself. To be able to build stuff quicker. And, you know, I put it out on GitHub and other people started using it. And, you know, here we are, um, you know, basically 15 years, uh, later. Uh, but, you know, I was always very interested in web development and the internet and pretty much what I've done my entire life.

Yeah, I mean, like, that is— that has been like— people felt that people know the side of Taylor Since the day of Laravel itself. But you know, those days, I think you also shared about your story about typewriting challenge, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. With the MUDs and stuff.

Yeah.

Yeah. So back in the, like the mid to late '90s, there were these online games called MUDs, M-U-D, and it stood for a multi-user dungeon. And you like log on and you did like quests and adventures and stuff, but it was all text. So like if you wanted to move north in the world, you just type. in or north or whatever. And you could type other things to do things like drink or cast a spell or like attack a monster or whatever. And because you had to like type fast, you know, because you're like in a battle and you have to like heal and attack and you had, you had to type all of these things really quickly. I was probably like 11 or 12 years old when I was playing these.

Mm-hmm.

And that, that's how I learned to like type really quickly so that when I went to typing class in school, I was already like much faster than the teacher. I'd basically type Like I do, like I do now. Um, but I was like only 12 years old. Um, but yeah, it was just crazy.

That's—

I'll always remember that's how I learned to type. But any— so I've been building a MUD again with AI. Um, yeah, you know, to like use AI tools to like see, you know, that's just what I've been using them for because, um, I can build in languages that I've never used before.

Yeah.

And during that time, you must have gone back into the memories where you felt the same excitement. Yeah, right now you feel the same level of excitement in the times of AI?

Yeah, I think so. Like, I think it's the most exciting time ever to be a web developer, honestly, because there's so many more possibilities, you know. If you wanted— if you had never done web development before, and right, someone came to you and they said, I want to learn how to build Laravel applications. If you've never done development before that, you know, let's say like 3 years ago, that was like a really big challenge, right, to like learn You have to learn about programming, you have to learn about PHP, you have to learn about HTML, CSS, everything. Now it's still like, it's still a challenge, but you have like this expert tutor that can help you along the way, right? So you can say, hey, you can tell the AI, I want the, you know, the screen to look like this, or I need my code to do this, and it like will write it for you. And then you can even ask questions about it, like, why did you do this this way, or how does this work? So for example, like for me, I've been writing this MUD using JavaScript and Bun and for like async sockets and stuff. And I have no idea, like I've never written any serious TypeScript before, but like it's been totally fine because I have AI. So it just unlocks lots of possibilities for the things you can build.

Yeah, I mean like programming language was a barrier before, Yes. Like, I still remember, like, I had to learn from W3Schools during the time of 2003 to '07 for writing PHP and document.getElementById for 4 different classes of writing AJAX. But nowadays in coming time, that barrier has already been broken.

Yeah, it's crazy.

That's true. But that reminds me, I would also like to invite my co-host because we have a lot of questions which we want to take part of the stream. I would like to invite Abbas. Abbas is there on the backstage. Abbas, can you please come on the front stage? Before we move forward, Abbas, please do your introduction.

Hey everyone. My name is Abbas Ali and I am a co-organizer for Laracon India and I lead a team at Premium Systems. I mean, Vishal was talking about your earlier days. So one thing I think which is not so well known is what was your formal education? What degree do you hold or what did you study in college?

Yeah, so here I have a bachelor's degree, which means here in America, that means like 4 years of university. I studied information technology at Arkansas Tech University. It's here in the state where I live. And I honestly, a lot of my university education was more around computer networking and hardware, things like that. I only had, I think, maybe 4 classes of programming in university. Like, there were 2 C++ classes. I had a really old language called RPG. I don't even remember what it stands for.

RPG.

This is a very old language. What does that mean?

Maybe G should be for graphics.

It stands for Report Program Generator. It was a language created in 1959 by IBM. So I had a class on that in college, but how I actually learned to program in a professional setting was when I was about to graduate from university, since like my last year, they had sort of like a career fair where companies locally came to interview students for program or like software or technology careers. And I interviewed with a company called Arkansas Best Freight. They're a publicly traded company here in America. They're a pretty large company. And they hired me and then they put me through a 6-month training program to learn .NET, COBOL, ASP, things like that. So I learned a lot of that. on the job.

Yeah. Okay. That's before, before your first job, uh, in your college days, was there any programming language in your course or nothing?

Yeah, just C++. Um, yeah, that's the only thing I did. And I was definitely not an expert, but I wrote basic, uh, C++ programs. Um, yeah.

Yes, Vishal. Yeah.

So I have a question about entrepreneurship and mindset. Because nowadays, uh, because of AI, the shift has changed. And you are a classic example that you were like a solo entrepreneur. Then there was a team of like, first Laracon was there. There was a team of 4 to 5. You got started and then nowadays a team of, I think, 70 to 90, more than that around of people. So in span from solo developer to a proper CEO having so many people during that journey, what are the lessons which you learned as an entrepreneur? And what is the mindset shift which happened in you as an individual as well?

Yeah, it's a good question. Um, Laravel was always very— we've been lucky because we're a popular open source framework. Um, I think one of the biggest challenges around entrepreneurship is knowing what to build and then getting, like, hiring the right people to help you build it. Knowing what to build was a little bit easier for me because as I was building the framework, there were these very natural problem areas that I could go solve. Laravel Forge would be the first example, the first business I created around Laravel. It was very kind of obvious at the time that people were building Laravel applications and they need a way to deploy them, right? That makes sense. And most of the other things that I built were just, you know, problems that I was having or that the community was having commonly and we needed a solution for them. So basically that applies to like packages like Socialite, Telescope, things like that, all the way to commercial things like Forge, Cloud, Nightwatch.

Yep.

Laravel's also been lucky on the hiring aspect because We have lots of contributors to the open source framework, so we're able to like see, you know, oh, this is a person that has contributed a lot of value and they have a lot of knowledge on the open source side, so perhaps we should hire them to work here. So we sort of get to like see what their coding knowledge or like quality is like before we hire them. And then we, you know, with AI, you know, the developers can do more. Faster. So, you know, since we're not handwriting a lot of code, which is very time-consuming, because a lot of the times when you're coding, you like basically know exactly what you need to type, right? Or like do, but like it takes time to like create a bunch of classes, write a bunch of files, all of that stuff. So for the boring work, like the boilerplate work, AI has made it so much faster.

Yeah.

You do still have to have like good ideas, right? Like the AI can't come up with good ideas for you, but If you're steering it in the right direction, it saves so much time.

That's true. The exact question connects what you shared with the community because as the other level, the moment when it was announced that Laravel is part of NowExcel and the investment is there, everything started like a bubble. For people like us who were part of the community, we felt that now Laravel will become more like a typical corporate. The value of community might got changed. There were a lot of like gossips around that. But one of the area, like you rightly mentioned about the contribution and as a Laravel, the mindset was there, which made Laravel as known for one of the most welcoming and kind community. And that is the reason why a lot of people, even who are hired or even who are part of Laravel as a company, are also generated through the community.

Mm-hmm.

So my question to you is that what habits, or did you have any practice or any thoughts in my mind, in your mind, which always comes when you think about community or you are part of other communities? So are there any best practices which you thought of your mind that You being the source has to take care.

Yeah, um, I was very involved from the very beginning in the community of Laravel. So like, even when I first released Laravel in 2011, um, I was in the Laravel forums personally. Like, I was in the chat rooms personally answering questions, like getting feedback, giving feedback. Um, so I was very, very involved, like at the ground level of the community for many years.

Yeah.

And was like very accessible, right? Like, there's some— I think there's some projects where the creator of the project is like, they're hard to communicate with, or like they're very private, or they're not involved necessarily like in the everyday like operations and community aspects of the project. But for me, like, even today, like, I just give people my email address, you know, or like tell them to like DM me or contact me directly. I'm still very involved in like what's happening. At the very foundational level of Laravel. So, you know, like, if you're starting an open source project, you really, like, when it first starts, you have to be really involved to set the community tone that you want. And I think that it paid off, you know, like, those initial years of investment sort of, like, created a certain community style, and it sort of has continued ever since then.

Yeah.

That means, like, Having those practices builds the culture, and that is the reason why we are always welcoming and kind, because you created those, those lines for us so that we can follow the legacy.

Yeah, yeah. Once it gets going, like once the community is large, everyone sort of like knows, understands, you know, like the feel of it. But when it's still early, it was important for me to be like very directly involved in shaping it.

Yeah, true. Uh, there is one funny question being asked by someone. You can give an answer. The question is, what was your first salary?

Uh, for programming, I think, um, yeah, so that was— this was 2008, and I got a .NET career, and my starting salary was, I think it was $52,000 or $56,000 USD per year. I can't remember if it was $52,000 or $56,000, but it was Something like that.

Yeah.

Um, which at the time was very, um, for the state I live in was, was pretty average, uh, salary, I guess.

Yep.

I, I'm actually not sure what it is now for like .NET in my state. I'd be curious to know.

Yeah, it's like a fun question because, you know, it was also funny to know the creator of Laravel, how much he was earning at the first. But, but from the culture of community Like you have seen the Laravel community grow online, like we are doing livestream, but also in real life about Laracon events as well. So Laracon India is coming, Laracon EU is there. So how important it is like an in-person connection compared to those online events? Because a lot of people are still thinking to be part of Laracon India there. Every day we are having keep booking tickets, keep booking, keep booking. So what do you think about like the difference between real life versus—

Um, the connections are like more real and permanent in person. So like, if you meet someone in person, you know, like, and you like ask them a question later, like you keep in touch, it's just like a more real connection, I think.

Yep.

Like there's people, there's people I've met at Laracon that like I keep in touch with or I talk to because we have like this real— we actually met each other in person, right? It's not, it's like not a make-believe on the internet or like virtual. So I think it just builds like a more real connection with people. It's also just more like energizing, I guess.

Yeah.

Like when you're in person and you're talking to people about what they're working on, it like inspires you to go work on things. It's just more like exciting than like sitting at home and watching on a screen. I think that's like, it's fine too, right? Like that's valuable, but it's just more energizing, I think, in person.

Yeah, that's true. So that reminds me that there are only, uh, 10 days remaining of Laracon India, practically 10 days for us as organizers, but it is happening on 31st. Those people who are on fans, this is the best opportunity for you to meet not only Taylor but entire, uh, the crew, along with a lot of excitement is also happening. Please book your tickets because, uh, everything is sorted. Everything is going perfectly in streamline. Everyone is excited. So in case you are at fans, you are thinking that coming to an event versus just seeing it online will make a difference or will not make a difference, then it's your choice. But we would recommend that the QR code is also there on the screen. So whenever you feel you want to be part of it, be part of it for sure. You'll have the best time.

It's kind of rare you get a chance to meet, uh, you know, like Nuno, Frake, Marcel, Pavlos.

Yep. And you on top of that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All in one location.

Yeah.

I mean, like, the funnier part, Taylor, about Laracon India is that for speakers, it's really not an easy journey, especially who travels from the US, because you come here just for 3 days in a different time zone, almost like 12 hours of difference.

Yeah.

And then you come in a different time zone, then again after 3 days you are in a different time zone. So how is that like experience for you?

Oh, it's pretty tough actually. So like last time, uh, when I came 2 years ago, I was like very sleepy during the day and then like awake all night, you know, because I was like opposite of my normal schedule. So like right now in the US it's 10:30 AM. I think it's like 10:30 PM for you, right?

Yeah.

Uh, so we're exactly like 12 hours, almost the same. Yeah, exactly 12 hours apart.

Yep.

So yeah, it is a pretty serious time zone difference. Yeah, it's pretty weird.

That's perfect.

So Abbas, would you like to ask any questions?

Yeah, absolutely. So Taylor, now coming on to your talk, everyone is talking about your talk at Laracon India. So can you just give us, without giving away too much, can you tell us what it will be about and what are you going to speak on?

Yeah, so at Laracon India, I'll primarily be speaking about just like giving a tour of the AI SDK from Laravel. So this is our like first-party AI SDK that does text generation, you know, streaming agents, structured output, images, audio, audio transcription. file storage and vectorization, re-ranking. There's like, it's actually a lot, quite a few features. So there's a lot to cover and to go through. But my plan is to give a tour of the whole AI SDK. And then hopefully the week after that, tag a, you know, a public beta release so people can play with it pretty much like a few days after the conference, you know.

Okay. And What made you start working on this project? I mean, there were already existing SDKs available. So what was the tip-off point?

For me, primarily, it was like, you know, the AI movement in software development is probably the biggest development. I mean, honestly, maybe in my career of, you know, software development in terms of things have you know, changed drastically and sort of evolving very quickly. I thought it was important that Laravel has like a first-party opinion on AI development and AI SDK, because so many applications in the future, you know, and even now are going to be written with AI features included. So, you know, just like Laravel has database storage, job queuing, file storage, like AI is really just as important as all of those things now, you know, So I thought it was important. So Laravel's AI SDK, actually, some people may not know this, we do use Prism PHP to some extent under the hood and have started financially sponsoring Prism as a project. So it is built on top of some community efforts, but is sort of a first-party offering in the AI space.

Okay.

Abbas, meanwhile, there are a lot of questions also being asked, so you can also have them pop up as well in parallel.

Uh, sure, let me find one question. Okay, I think, yeah, let's take this by Binay. What still excites you the most about working on Laravel?

Oh gosh, you know, like to me Laravel, like it's this like never-ending journey for perfection in terms of like web development. So there's always just like something to make a little bit better or a little bit faster or a little bit easier. And, uh, for me, that's just like a never-ending journey because software is rarely like perfect, right? Um, there's usually something to, something to improve somewhere. So for me, it is just this never-ending project and like pursuit of like web development perfection.

So on that topic, uh, which particular feature in Laravel do you think is really perfectly built? I mean, it doesn't need, uh, doesn't need to change at all.

Oh, gosh, I don't know if there's anything that's perfectly built. I think some of those valuable features are probably some of the more popular features like Eloquent, although Eloquent's also the most complicated part of Laravel, I would say. I think the job queuing is really pretty well done, the event broadcasting. But I don't know if any of it is perfect, but hopefully it's pretty good.

There is, there is one thing which I would like, uh, Taylor to, uh, share about that. Nowadays, after this AI, the skills for an engineer and the mindset for an entrepreneur or as a CEO has been changed. So for example, a lot of CEO feel that now is going to be a more challenge rather than seeing as an opportunity. A lot of senior developers think that juniors can do much better than them with the speed or maybe problem-solving thinking. So from your point of view, for software engineering, for developers, what is the ideal way for them to look up in 2026? And also for business owners, what is your thoughts on that?

I think there's still a lot of skills that developers need. So for example, like when I've been using AI, The AI sometimes, like Claude Code or Cursor, will try to do something and it will actually work, but like, I know because I've been developing for a long time that this is actually probably not the ideal approach.

Yeah.

You know, it's not going to be scalable, or it's not gonna be maintainable, or it's like creating a lot of duplication in the code or in the underlying abstractions. And so because like, I think if you're like a mid or senior level engineer, you have this experience of, you know, what will work and what will be maintainable over a long timeframe and what won't be. So if I see the AI doing something that I know is not gonna— going to be like maintainable or scalable in the codebase, I can, I like am experienced enough to have it fix it.

Yeah.

But for a junior developer that may not have like been coding for as long, they don't have that experience, right? So they let the AI keep building, and eventually everything is very complex and very hard to maintain. And even for the AI, it has trouble maintaining the codebase because it has gotten too complex. So I think there's a lot of value in understanding, like, the fundamental aspects of what makes software maintainable, testable, and scalable over long timeframes. Like, it's fine if you have a project that you're going to throw away in a month, right? Who cares, like, what the code looks like? But if you're building a business where the idea is you want the business to remain in business for 10, 20 years, the code is gonna live for a while, and it needs to be maintainable, not just for humans, but the AI needs to be able to maintain it long-term. And I think that will be the— that will be like the new skill set to some extent of—

Yeah.

Are you skilled enough to steer the AI in the right direction so that your code is maintainable over a long period of time? And I don't know how you can do that without actually learning the fundamentals still of, like, software development and good code.

Yeah.

So I think that that has actually not changed. The only thing to me that has changed is you do not have to type all of the code manually by hand, right? Which is great. Like, that's not even the fun part of developing. Typing is whatever, but you still have to have the right ideas and you still have to have the right, like, understanding of the system, I think, to, um, be able to build good software.

I mean, like, I mean, like sometimes, you know, it's crazy at the same time inspiring because one of my client in one of the project, I know like one of her colleague is not even, did not even touch keyboard since one month and just doing everything all about vibe coding. So when you hear about those stories, when you see the real change happening, and at the same time you are part of a traditional project. That creates entire mindset change or a shift into engineering. But from your point of view, in year of 2026 or '27, what will be the ideal role of developers? Will they act more like an architect or?

Yeah, I think so. No, I think you're right. I think they will act more like an architect. And I think that senior developers will have to train junior developers on what good architecture is. I also think that the AI and the agents will get better at architecture over time, you know, like the—

Yeah.

The agents will get better. That's just like a given, and hopefully they get better quickly. But we can also publish like skills and guidance, sort of like Laravel Boost, right, where we can sort of help the agent have good architecture. But I do agree with you, like the ultimate skill for the developer is architecture, and I actually think that was always, even before AI, that was always the valuable skill, right? So like that actually has not changed.

There was, but the mindset was not there for engineers that they have to act like an architect. They have to be a domain expertise. For example, someone working in Laravel has to understand from an architect point of view that what is the real need of domain. Also the expertise of domain is needed, not just about the code. That's where I mean, like, for Laracon India, upcoming Laracon India, for everyone's knowledge, we also want to focus on the same thing apart from the talks. We also want to talk about how as an engineer you can build an efficient career surrounded by AI, how you can build proper skills in 2026 as an engineer. So these are the areas where being part of Laracon India, everyone will learn a lot of things around that for 2 days. So That is also one of the most exciting parts of Laracon India this year.

Yeah, definitely. I think that, you know, there will— there's going to be like more and more software demand, right? Like, yep, with AI, I think that software development, the demand for it is not getting less. People want more and more and more software. Um, so it's a good time to be in the industry.

More products, more ideas, more distribution.

Exactly.

So marketing is going to be a real challenge.

Yeah, exactly.

And yes, on the subject of architecting the application or software, uh, Taylor, uh, AI is moving crazy fast. So while building this AI SDK, what all points did you keep in mind so that the base architecture of the SDK is long-term? Because new capabilities are being added literally every month, right?

Yeah, so I, I pretty much hand-wrote the initial foundation of the AI SDK to make sure that it was very flexible and well-built. And I could add additional capabilities really easily because even while I was building the AI SDK, new model features come out, right? So like, I think when I started building the AI SDK, Anthropic did not have a structured output mode by default. Like it didn't have that. So they added that in the meantime. And then like I added additional features like re-ranking later after I had already built a lot of the AI SDK. So I tried to make it extremely flexible, um, and the underlying architecture was basically like hand-designed by me. And then once I had all of the foundations in place, of course I can use AI itself to write a lot of the code, especially the boilerplate code like API calls and things like that. Uh, but yeah, I did create the library to be very flexible.

Sure. And how are you keeping up with Uh, what's happening in the AI world? I mean, if let's say some new capabilities are being added and you want the SDK to catch up with that, so how do you keep yourself updated on that?

You know, I don't— nothing, mainly watching Twitter, you know, like, or x.com, or, um, just like programming group chats that I'm in with friends and stuff. But nothing like, uh, you know, very sophisticated, mainly just watching social media, probably like The rest of us are doing.

Yeah, true.

One, one, one question about a dream, unbuilt dream. Does Taylor has an unbuilt dream? Is there any Laravel product or idea you would still love to build someday but haven't built it yet?

You know, a lot of that stuff is more like features for Cloud and Nightwatch and Forge that we still want to build. Because we still have big features that we still wanna build for those products. And, you know, I think that will occupy several years' worth of time to like finish out all of the ideas we have for those products.

Wow.

Like as it stands today. So there's lots of good stuff there. I don't think there's any like big Laravel product, you know, like a new product that, you know, I'm dreaming about right now, but just lots of features for Cloud and Nightwatch, and of course the AI SDK.

But important question, that reminds me that a lot of people don't know about a private cloud. So can you share more about it?

Yeah, so private cloud is basically the same Laravel Cloud experience where it's fully managed deployments, but we give you your own compute clusters, your own AWS account. You're totally isolated from the rest of Laravel Cloud infrastructure, and you still get to use the same cloud.laravel.com dashboard. So it's very easy to use. You still get preview environments, auto-scaling, all of that, but you are securely isolated in your own account. Some companies require this basically for compliance reasons or whatever. So we're able to offer this. We can spin up private cloud environments pretty quickly these days. So if anyone's interested in that, we can definitely help out.

Yep. Perfect.

One important question, one habit that matters. So if you If you had, or if you want to recommend one habit which each engineer should have, especially in the upcoming time of AI, what would that be?

To me, it's the most important things a developer can be are sort of consistent and fast. I think that if you're a developer and you want to be really successful, you have to kind of be consistent every single day or as much as possible in delivering high-value results quickly. I think, you know, some people it's like easy to really be like focused on a project for like a few days or a few weeks, right? But I just saw like Eric Barge with Laravel News, for example, is publishing his like 600th edition of his newsletter. So it's like 11 years or something like that.

Yep.

If you're like consistent over the long timeframe of like really focusing on your craft and building and shipping, That's probably the most important thing you can do. I also think moving fast is really honestly super important, especially if you're in a startup environment, you're trying to start a business, like the world just moves really quickly and you do have to move really fast, I think, to be competitive.

Yeah.

So we can say like in one word, like don't wait, just ship.

Yeah, basically.

Yeah. Will there be any time when there will be multiple agents of Taylor running in parallel? 10 different dealers working in parallel.

Probably. Yeah, probably. I bet that will happen in 2026.

I'm pretty sure about that. That will happen for sure. Abbas, I think a lot of people are asking. We can take 2-3 questions. I have so many questions, but though that will never end, the time will end. So if you find any interesting question, please pop up.

Yeah. So let's take this one. What are other things coming to Laravel apart from AI SDK in the near future?

Oh yeah, it's a good question. So we've been working on Inertia 3.0. We did Inertia 2.0, I think last year, which had a lot of new features. We've been working on Inertia 3.0. Better JSON API support in the framework will be coming. We're working on a Cloud CLI. We're working— after that, we'll probably do a Nightwatch CLI. What else do we have going? We're making lots of improvements to the starter kits right now, lots of improvements to the VS Code extension. We actually hired someone to work on the VS Code extension full-time and to work on starter kits basically full-time. And we have someone working on Inertia full-time. So we have quite a handful of people now working on open source pretty much full-time. Yeah, so I mean, lots of big projects going on.

May we know, like, how is your daily schedule, Taylor?

It's not that different than it was before. So like, I start my day by spending like an hour probably on GitHub reviewing pull requests and things like that. And then I'm mainly on Slack, you know, with our company answering questions or giving feedback or reviewing things. So a lot of it is pretty similar. And then in the afternoon, I'll usually try to code a little bit. Some days I don't get to code at all, to be honest, because I have like meetings and stuff. But most days I get to code at least a little bit on the AI SDK. And sometimes even at night, I will still be coding on the AI SDK, even in bed.

Yeah.

So I mean, pretty similar to what it was, what it's always been, you know.

That gives an answer of the question of Saeed. Are you still writing the code?

Yeah, I still code almost pretty much every day.

Yeah, like Shruti has asked the question in the same regards, like what's your AI workflow and what tools do you use and what's your approach currently?

Uh, I mainly use Claude Code because I still use Sublime Text for my editor. Um, so I mainly use Claude Code. Um, sometimes I will be defining like interfaces and architecture by hand and then telling Claude Code about it and having it implement features once I've defined like the architecture. I don't use a lot of like fancy AI workflows. Like sometimes I'll have like a few skills or whatever. I'll use Laravel Boost. And if I'm working on something pretty big, I use plan mode in Claude Code pretty often. That's usually pretty successful. And then once the code has been written by the AI, always spend, um, you know, some amount of time reviewing it, tweaking it, modifying it, things like that. Uh, but a pretty simple workflow, to be honest.

Yeah. And with that, I think you answered a few questions because someone was asking, is Sublime Text still your favorite editor?

Yeah, it's definitely still my favorite editor. Yeah.

What's your middle name, Taylor?

Uh, Weldon.

Weldon. Weldon.

Yeah.

Taylor Weldon.

And Bharat is asking any moment from Laracon India that really stayed with you?

Well, like I said, the garba dancing for sure. But you know, lots of good conversations with people and developers that are just trying to build really great stuff. I think they're always very excited to meet like Laravel core team members. So it's just very, it's very good to meet everyone.

Yeah, I, I remember one funny moment. We both were traveling in first ladacon from my, uh, in my car from, uh, venue to hotel, and my wife called me, and in my phone, uh, in my car, it rang up my wife, and you took a picture of it.

That's funny. Yeah, yeah.

So, so one, one personal question, like You are the creator of Laravel, CEO of Laravel, responsible for millions of people because we all are using Laravel. So there is also a human side of Taylor Otwell as well. So as a human, like, do you sometimes feel fear, burnout, stressed? And how do you still stay grounded when things don't go perfectly?

Um, yeah, I do still feel stressed. I, I wouldn't say I ever feel really like burned out on working on Laravel. Because Laravel's still my favorite thing to work on and there's always something new to work on. I think running a company can be more stressful and more prone to burnout because you're dealing with a lot of people, right? And people are really more challenging than code to some extent. But on the code, I basically never feel burned out on coding. And I've been coding for, gosh, 20+ years at this point. So I've never felt burnt out on coding. I think, uh, you know, I try to have like a pretty normal life outside of coding, like where I disconnect from the computer for a little bit, just hang out with the family. And ultimately, like, life is more— life is bigger than like coding, right? So like, um, yeah, there's more to it than like business or coding or any of that. So I just try to keep all of that in perspective.

Because see, grass is greener on the other end. For example, Everyone feels that yes, it's a Taylor, so he's the legend. He has Lamborghini, he has lavish house, but Taylor is also human, and everyone else is also human. So every human has a side, and that's something you have to deal with. That does not matter whether it's a Taylor or anyone else.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So I think Abbas, I. I think if we want to take— I still have so many questions, but the time is limited.

So yeah, let's just take a couple of more questions from public and then—

Yeah, sure. So Taylor, still you have like 5 minutes. We can take a couple.

Yeah, sure. 5 minutes is good.

Okay. So Pranav is asking, what would be your must-have tech stack if you're building a new product with Laravel in 2026? And with this, he means, I guess, With Laravel, what all is your favorite for the frontend? Then what packages would you use generally if, let's say, if you're building a full-stack web application yourself?

Yeah, so definitely Laravel and Tailwind for sure. And then I think with Livewire 4 versus Inertia, it really just depends on your preference. I've actually written projects with both of them. I find Livewire extremely productive and fast to build things because you're sort of not context switching between a Vue or React frontend and a PHP backend, and you're writing quite a bit of just PHP and HTML, and all of the reactivity is handled for you. I think with Livewire 4, it is a big step forward, and it's probably the fastest stack to build things in to some extent.

Yeah.

If your team already is really familiar with Vue or React, or you want to use some specific Vue or React frontend, I think that, of course, Inertia is like your best option there. For the database, I usually use MySQL, deploy it on Laravel Cloud, Laravel Reverb. What else? I don't know. I actually keep a pretty like basic tech stack, I would say, in terms of like I just use a lot of default Laravel opinions. I don't use a lot of like extra packages or like extra stuff, to be honest. It's pretty straightforward Laravel.

But if you were not the creator of Laravel, then what would Taylor Otwell be?

I would still use Laravel, I think. I think if I was building web applications, you know, I think it's the most productive way to build Yeah, full-stack web applications.

Nice. Let's say you weren't— you were not a programmer at all. Yeah. So apart from programming or tech industry, uh, what would, uh, what, what would you have been doing?

Uh, I always said I wanted to open a barber shop or something like that and like just have this relaxing job. Or, um, what else? I don't know. You know, I, I've been programming for so long, like I haven't even really thought about it since I was programming since I was a little kid. Um, but it's hard to imagine. It's honestly hard to imagine doing anything else. I, I honestly don't really know.

Yeah, I mean, like, you started, uh, typewriting since you were at the age of 6, I think?

Yeah, I've been type— I mean, yeah, I've been typing since 9 or 10. Um, yeah, so I, I don't know. It's really all I know is programming.

That's perfect.

Yep.

So, okay.

I think we're hitting the 1-hour mark, Vishal. Yep, uh, perfect.

So Taylor, last words before I wrap up, because I want to say something, but before that, anything you want to share with everybody whomsoever are part of this conversation?

Oh, just, you know, thank you for using Laravel. Um, be sure to come to Laracon India. I'm sure it's going to be a great time. You get to meet lots of cool people and hear good talks. And keep shipping, keep building.

Yep.

So with that note, I want to wrap up with a simple thought that today we talked about a life of a human, of a creator, of a business, of a community, of a mindset, of an entrepreneurship. We talked on all— even AI, the future. We talked on all different parts of human aspect. which connected every single one of you. And that, that leaves maybe one thought that Laravel is not all about code. Laravel is also about care. And that is the reason why we say that it's a community care for the community. And we say that we are a big family. And that is the same spirit which Laracon India holds, that connecting, collaborating, and creating a platform where a lot of careers and a lot of future can be built. So if you were inspired after today's talk, if you are pumped up, we definitely want to see you in Laracon India. If you still did not book your ticket, this is the last chance because we gonna close ticketing in next 5 to 6 days. We have only 60 to 70 spots. The badge printing has already done. So if you wanna be part of it, this is the opportunity to meet all the creators and see what you can build. In 2026 altogether, because some of the conversations matter more than just a screen, and for that, being in person is important. So with this note, I would like to thank you, Taylor. Thank you, Abbas. Thank you, everybody, for being on call today. We wish you all have a great day, and we all see you in Laracon India.

Bye.

Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Taylor. Bye.

Bye, see ya.

Bye.