Installation - Lathe docs

Lathe is an admin panel builder for Laravel. It installs from Packagist like any Laravel package and needs no licence key.

Requirements

PHP 8.4 or newer
Laravel 13
MySQL 8.4+, MariaDB 10.11+, PostgreSQL 15+ or SQLite

The panel's JavaScript and CSS are already built inside the package. Your app does not need Node to run Lathe, only to build custom components.

Install with Composer

composer require lathe/lathe:^1.0@beta
php artisan lathe:install

Lathe is in beta, so the version constraint names it: without @beta, Composer refuses a beta in an app whose minimum stability is stable. Once 1.0.0 is out, composer require lathe/lathe is enough.

lathe:install does six things and leaves any file that already exists alone:

Publishes config/lathe.php (see Configuration).
Publishes Lathe's migrations.
Writes app/Providers/LatheServiceProvider.php and adds it to bootstrap/providers.php.
Writes a User Resource in app/Lathe/Resources/User.php and its policy in app/Policies/UserPolicy.php.
Writes the Main dashboard in app/Lathe/Dashboards/Main.php.
Runs the migrations.

lathe:install publishes through two tags you can also run on their own: lathe-config and lathe-migrations. Two more tags copy a file into your app when you want it alone. lathe-translations writes lang/vendor/lathe/en.json, and lathe-resource writes the User Resource to app/Lathe/Resources/User.php, in the App namespace and with the model of your auth.providers.users provider already filled in. Change the namespace by hand if your app uses another.

Create a user

php artisan lathe:user

It asks for a name, an email and a password. Pass --name, --email and --password to skip the prompts in a script.

Allow the user in

Nobody can open the panel until you say who may. Open app/Providers/LatheServiceProvider.php and add the email to the viewLathe gate:

protected function gate(): void
{
    Gate::define('viewLathe', fn (object $user): bool => in_array(data_get($user, 'email'), [
        'taylor@example.com',
    ]));
}

The gate is checked in every environment, local included. For a rule that is not a list of emails, such as a role column, return your own check from the closure. To replace the whole check, override authorization() in the same provider and call Lathe::auth() with a callback.

Open the panel

Serve the app and open /lathe. Sign in with the user you created. The sidebar lists Dashboard and Users; the dashboard is empty until you add widgets with php artisan lathe:widget. The panel's title is your APP_NAME (a new Laravel app calls itself "Laravel"); set LATHE_APP_NAME to name the panel on its own.

Check the setup

php artisan lathe:doctor

It prints one line per check and exits 1 when a check fails. Run it after an upgrade and in your deploy script. On a new app it shows one WARN until php artisan optimize (or lathe:cache) caches the Resource list; that is expected in development.

Update Lathe

composer update lathe/lathe
php artisan migrate

The built assets come with the package and are served with a content hash in their address, so a browser never keeps a stale copy. If a plugin registers scripts or styles, run php artisan lathe:assets after updating. Read the upgrade guide before moving to a new minor or major version.

Uninstall

php artisan lathe:uninstall
composer remove lathe/lathe

lathe:uninstall removes the service provider, the published config and the copied assets. Your Resources and Lathe's tables stay until you delete them.

What you see

After lathe:install, lathe:user and adding the email to the gate, /lathe shows the sign-in screen. After signing in you see the sidebar with Dashboard and Users.