Quickstart

From an empty folder to a signed-in admin panel in about ten minutes. The kit is auth pages, a working two-factor flow and an admin shell for Laravel 12, installed by one Artisan command. MIT licensed.

The admin dashboard after a fresh install: sidebar, stat cards and the current user — Where this page ends: the admin shell at /admin.

Requirements


PHP	8.2 or newer
Laravel	12. Laravel 13 is allowed by the Composer constraints; its CI leg is experimental.
Frontend	Tailwind CSS v4 with Vite, which is what a fresh Laravel 12 app ships
Node	18 or newer, for the Vite build
Livewire	3.6 and Volt 1.7. Both arrive with the kit through Composer.

The kit targets a fresh app. Installing it over Breeze, Jetstream or hand-written auth collides on routes and views; Why this kit explains the rule and what the preflight check does when it finds existing scaffolding.

1. Create the app

laravel new my-app
cd my-app

composer create-project laravel/laravel my-app works the same way. When the Laravel installer asks, pick:

Prompt	Pick	Why
Starter kit	None	The kit is the auth and admin scaffolding. Every starter kit collides with it.
Frontend	Blade	Plain Vite plus Tailwind CSS v4, which the kit's theme file plugs into. Livewire and Volt come with the kit.
Testing framework	Pest or PHPUnit	No interaction with the kit.
Database	Any. SQLite is fine.	The kit's migrations run on anything Laravel supports.
Run `npm install` and migrations	Yes	The installer expects `resources/css/app.css` and `resources/js/app.js` to exist, and migrates on top of the base tables.

2. Require the kit

composer require shipbytes/laravel-ui-kit

The service provider is auto-discovered. Fortify, Livewire, Volt and the disposable-email check come along as dependencies.

3. Run the installer

php artisan ui-kit:install

The installer publishes the core, then prints a numbered list of the seven optional modules and waits for your picks: comma-separated numbers, all, or Enter for core only. The picker is a plain numbered list on purpose, so it works in every terminal.

Optional modules:
   1. admin-middleware — Route gating via roles/permissions. Falls back to an is_admin boolean column if skipped.
   2. support-tickets — Admin ticket queue with replies, status filters, and open-count sidebar badge.
   3. changelog — Admin-authored changelog entries with a public feed endpoint.
   4. contacts — Inbox for public contact-form submissions.
   5. profile — Self-service name/email/password/avatar + two-factor authentication.
   6. impersonation — Login-as-user from admin, with an exit-impersonation ribbon.
   7. activity-log — Audit trail via spatie/laravel-activitylog + admin viewer.

Type comma-separated numbers to install (e.g. 1,3,5), all for everything, or press Enter to install core only.
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For scripts and CI, skip the prompt:

php artisan ui-kit:install --modules=profile,support-tickets
php artisan ui-kit:install --modules=all --no-interaction

Modules can be added later with ui-kit:install-module; see Modules. What the installer changes in the app is listed under What the installer did below.

4. Finish wiring

The installer ends with a checklist of the things it cannot do for you. There are three.

Mail. Password reset and email verification send mail, so set the MAIL_* keys. For local work the log driver is enough:

MAIL_MAILER=log
MAIL_FROM_ADDRESS="[email protected]"
MAIL_FROM_NAME="${APP_NAME}"

Assets. Build once, or leave the dev server running:

npm install && npm run dev

Your first admin. Register through the UI at /register, then promote that account:

php artisan ui-kit:make-admin [email protected]

With no email the command promotes the first user. It assigns the Spatie admin role when the admin-middleware module is installed and sets the is_admin flag when that column exists, whichever mechanisms are present.

Open /login, sign in, and go to /admin.

The login page with email, password and remember-me fields — /login. Every auth page has a dark variant; the toggle lives in the admin header.

If anything looks wrong, run the health check first. It verifies published files, the Fortify flags, the Vite imports, the user trait, storage link, two-factor columns, duplicate route names and the mail sender, and prints the fix for each failure:

php artisan ui-kit:doctor

The stock Laravel welcome page shows logged-in users a Dashboard button that links to /dashboard, a route neither Laravel nor the kit registers. The kit's panel is at /admin. Point that button there or replace the welcome page.

What the installer did

Published the kit's config (config/ui-kit.php, config/admin.php), views, Livewire components, CSS and JS, route files and migrations into your app. They are yours to edit.
Published config/fortify.php and patched it: views => false so Fortify does not register its own auth pages against the kit's, home => /, and the passkeys feature commented out because the kit ships no passkey UI.
Added @import './ui-kit.css'; to resources/css/app.css and import './ui-kit'; to resources/js/app.js.
Published Fortify's two-factor columns migration and ran php artisan migrate once, after every module's migrations were queued.
Generated app/Models/Concerns/UiKitUser.php with exactly the traits your modules need and applied it to app/Models/User.php. The patch is lint-checked and reverted if it would break the file; only then does the checklist ask you to add the trait by hand.
Auto-loads routes/auth.php, routes/admin.php and routes/ui-kit-user.php from the service provider. Only files carrying the // ui-kit:managed header are loaded, so a pre-existing route file is never hijacked.
Registered login and two-factor rate limiters unless your app already defines them.

Core: every page and command that ships whether or not you pick a module.
Modules: what each of the seven adds, with a page per module.
Customising: brand, navigation, theme tokens and overriding views.