Using AI to Build a Laravel Feature with Junie in PhpStorm

I've recently been giving Junie a try in PhpStorm to see how helpful it can be when working on Laravel projects.

If you're not familiar with Junie, it's JetBrains' AI assistant that integrates directly into their integrated development environments (IDEs), including PhpStorm. I mentioned in a previous article that I've been using it to help me debug issues and write new code. So far, it's been a pretty positive experience. There are times when it doesn't quite get things right or misunderstands what I'm asking it to do, but overall, I've found it surprisingly useful.

So I thought I'd record a video showing how to use Junie in PhpStorm. In the video, I try to use Junie to add a new settings page to a fresh Laravel application that is using the Vue.js starter kit.

It's not one of those "Wow, look how amazing AI is!" types of videos (spoiler alert: it actually struggles to build what we need towards the end). But I thought it was a good demonstration of how Junie can help you build features in a Laravel application. It isn't perfect, but it can definitely speed things up when it works well.

P.s - Please excuse the poor audio quality in the video. I only realised during editing that I'd recorded it using my laptop's built-in microphone rather than my usual external one. Ooops!