Stack
About 720 wordsAbout 2 min
Spora is standalone PHP — not Laravel, not Symfony, not a full-stack framework. It borrows components from the Laravel and Symfony ecosystems for portability and reliability, but the codebase itself does not depend on a framework runtime.
The table below is the source-of-truth dependency list (verified against spora-core/composer.json and spora-core/AGENTS.md).
Runtime dependencies
| Package | Role | Why |
|---|---|---|
symfony/http-foundation | Request/response objects | Cleaner API than raw PHP globals ($request->query->get('x') vs $_GET['x']) |
symfony/console | CLI framework | Powers bin/spora commands; well-known Symfony UX |
symfony/http-client | HTTP client | HTTP transport for LLM driver requests (Anthropic, OpenAI, custom) |
symfony/mailer | Email sending | SendEmailTool via Symfony Mailer (SMTP transport) |
symfony/yaml | YAML parsing | Parsing .yaml / .yml agent templates, email-templates/*.yaml, and SKILL.md frontmatter |
symfony/process | Process management | Used by plugin install/uninstall (shell out to composer) |
nikic/fast-route | Routing | Fast, standalone router — no framework coupling |
php-di/php-di | Dependency injection | Framework-agnostic DI container (annotation-based + XML) |
illuminate/database (Eloquent) | Database ORM | Zero-config ORM with first-class SQLite support |
illuminate/filesystem | Filesystem | Used by PluginLoader for manifest discovery |
illuminate/pagination | Pagination | Used by admin UI for long lists |
delight-im/auth | Authentication | Lightweight, standalone session+password auth |
monolog/monolog | Logging | PSR-3 logger with PII-safe argument policy |
dragonmantank/cron-expression | Cron parsing | Parsing cron_expression for scheduled runs |
vlucas/phpdotenv | Env loading | Loading .env files on boot |
webklex/php-imap | Email reading | IMAP access for ReadEmailTool |
chriskonnertz/string-calc | Math expressions | Evaluating math strings in CalculatorTool |
pestphp/pest | PHP testing | Elegant testing framework (only in dev) |
| Vue 3 + Vite + Tailwind + radix-vue + lucide-vue-next | Frontend | Modern JS stack (shared with Laravel Breeze/Fortify patterns) |
All Composer constraints are pinned to ^8.0 (Symfony 8), ^13.0 (Eloquent 13), ^9.0 (delight-im/auth 9), etc. — the project keeps up with the latest minor of each major.
Dev dependencies
| Package | Role |
|---|---|
friendsofphp/php-cs-fixer | Code style enforcement (PHP-CS-Fixer, ^3.94) |
pestphp/pest | Test framework (^4.0) — also a runtime dep so test code can use it |
phpstan/phpstan | Static analysis (^2.1) |
phpstan/phpstan-mockery | PHPStan extension for Mockery annotations |
Runtime requirement
php: ^8.4.1— the codebase usesreadonlyproperties, enums, and the FrankenPHP-targeted FrankenPHP runtime. PHP 8.3 or earlier will not work.
Why this stack
The project’s AGENTS.md puts it well: “Spora is standalone PHP — NOT Laravel. It borrows components from the Laravel and Symfony ecosystems for portability and reliability, but runs no full stack framework.”
The key constraints the stack solves:
- Portability — every component must work on a shared cPanel/FTP host with PHP 8.4+ and no system dependencies. No Node, no Redis, no Varnish.
- Single binary deploy — the entire framework (vendored) + the prebuilt admin SPA fits in a small Docker image. The skeleton pulls
spora-core+spora-frontend+installervia Composer. - Zero-config dev —
composer create-project+composer install+php bin/spora spora:install+composer devis the entire bootstrap. SQLite by default; flip a single env var for MySQL. - Plugin-friendly — components must compose via PSR-4 autoloading (not Laravel’s service-provider magic). PHP-DI for DI; nikic/fast-route for routing; Symfony Console for CLI.
What this stack is NOT
- Not a full-stack framework. Spora doesn’t have a request lifecycle dispatcher, a kernel, a templating engine, or service providers. It’s a collection of standalone components wired together by
ContainerDefinitions.phpandRouter.php. - Not Laravel. Despite using
illuminate/database, Spora doesn’t have Eloquent models in the framework sense — it uses the query builder and ORM directly. Don’t add Laravel patterns (facades, service providers, middleware groups) outside what’s explicitly documented. - Not Symfony. Despite using
symfony/http-foundationandsymfony/console, Spora doesn’t have a HttpKernel, a DependencyInjection container in the Symfony sense, or a Symfony bundle system.
The next major dependency addition (if any) would be a PSR-15 HTTP server request handler — currently Spora uses the PHP built-in server (php -S) for dev and FrankenPHP for production. Neither is in this Composer list.
For more detail
- Project structure — where each piece of the stack lives in the codebase
- CLI & coding standards — how the tooling enforces style and runs tests
- How to add a tool — a worked example of using the framework