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Synapse is a browser-based development dashboard for agents built with Laravel’s AI SDK. It discovers agent classes, lets you send messages to the real agent, and shows details such as tool calls, token usage, conversation history, and exceptions. It is an inspection tool—not an AI model or a replacement for the SDK.
What Synapse helps you inspect
Laravel’s AI SDK defines agents as PHP classes that bring together instructions, conversation context, tools, and, optionally, a structured output schema. Laravel calls agents “the fundamental building block for interacting with AI providers in the Laravel AI SDK.” Synapse provides a browser interface for discovering those classes and examining how they behave as you develop them.
Instead of manually registering agents in Synapse, you configure directories for discovery. The dashboard scans them on each request and displays agent cards with the class name, provider, model, and available tools. An information panel shows resolved settings, including temperature, maximum tokens, maximum steps, tool choice, the system prompt, and tool JSON schemas.
How the browser playground behaves
Synapse’s playground sends messages to the actual agent and streams its reply. According to the product overview, you can attach images, documents, and audio; attachments remain available for follow-up messages in that conversation. A per-message model selector lets you try the next message with a different model without changing the agent class. That selection resets after you leave the page, and Synapse records the model used on the message.
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Conversational and stateless agents
For an agent that implements the SDK’s Conversational contract, Synapse supplies the conversation thread from its own stored history. The overview says this does not use the application’s conversation tables. A stateless agent instead receives each message independently, as it would in production.
Structured-output agents
Structured-output agents run without earlier messages, and the playground presents the result in a JSON card. This is a different flow from continuing a conversational thread, so use it when inspecting an agent that returns a defined output structure.
What you can see after a reply
Tool activity
Tool-call cards appear in sequence and show the tool name, status, duration, arguments, and result. Provider tools, such as web search or code interpreter, use a separate card treatment. Synapse maps differing Anthropic and OpenAI status terms to common pending, success, and error states; hovering reveals the provider’s original status.
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The overview lists token counts for each reply, including cache-read, cache-write, and reasoning tokens. If a tool or agent throws an exception, an error card displays its exception class, message, and stack trace. These details can help you trace a failed reply from its output back to the relevant tool call or error.
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Conversation history
Synapse’s history view supports searching, filtering, renaming, and replaying conversations. This makes it possible to revisit an interaction while adjusting an agent, rather than relying only on the latest playground response.
Install Synapse and open the dashboard
The published instructions use Composer and an Artisan installer:
composer require redberry/synapse --dev
php artisan synapse:install- Install the package with Composer in your Laravel project.
- Run the installer with
php artisan synapse:install. - Open the dashboard at
/synapse.
The package overview says the compiled frontend is included, so a separate npm build is not required. Synapse reads the provider and API-key configuration already set up in config/ai.php. Laravel’s SDK documentation covers its own Composer installation and provider configuration through config/ai.php or environment variables.
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Configure agent discovery
By default, Synapse scans app/Ai/Agents and app/Agents. The first is also the location used by the SDK’s make:agent command. Configure additional directories with discovery.paths; use discovery.ignore to exclude named classes. Because discovery runs on each request, the overview describes no separate manual registration step.
Check compatibility before installing
Compatibility depends on the current package and framework releases. A Packagist result dated September 18, 2026 listed Synapse v0.1.4 with PHP ^8.3, laravel/ai ^0.9|^0.10|^0.11, and Laravel Framework ^12.0|^13.0. These are version-specific registry details, not a guarantee that the same constraints remain current. Check the package’s current registry entry and repository before installing or upgrading.
Understand Synapse’s conversation storage
Synapse stores its conversations in its own tables. That storage is distinct from any conversation tables used by the application or Laravel AI SDK. The documented cleanup command removes conversations older than the specified number of days:
php artisan synapse:prune --days=7To schedule a daily prune, set SYNAPSE_AUTO_PRUNE=true. Decide how long development conversations should remain available, particularly if your test messages or attachments contain information you do not want retained. The product overview does not establish security, privacy, telemetry, or production-deployment guarantees.
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Synapse is relevant if you already build agents with Laravel’s AI SDK and want a browser-based way to run them and inspect their behavior. Its documented features address several parts of the development loop:
- Discover agents and review their resolved settings and tool schemas.
- Send messages to the real agent, including supported attachments.
- Trace tool arguments, results, status, duration, and exceptions.
- Review, filter, and replay conversations, along with reply token counts.
It does not replace the SDK’s agent classes, provider configuration, or application logic. Treat it as a development and inspection surface, and confirm compatibility and operational requirements against the current package documentation before adopting it.
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