Agent files are generated and managed by Boost, so the starter isn't tied to one agent. Claude Code comes set up out of the box, mainly for the commands, and php artisan boost:install adds whichever others suit you. boost:update refreshes them. Anything inside the <laravel-boost-guidelines> markers gets overwritten on the next run, so edit around it. The workflow ideas behind the CLAUDE.md are covered in AI Driven Development.
Local dev only. Boost runs an MCP server that hands tools to the agent for querying the database, inspecting schema and searching package docs. None of it has to do with exposing an MCP server to your own users, that's the MCP Server doc.
Boost writes its config to .mcp.json assuming PHP on your host, but PHP lives in the container here. So the config points at docker compose exec -T php php artisan boost:mcp instead. The -T matters because MCP talks JSON-RPC over stdin and stdout and a TTY corrupts the stream, which is also why ./dev artisan can't stand in for it.
Each conversation spawns its own boost:mcp process inside the container. That means the containers need to be up first and .mcp.json is only read when a conversation starts. Run ./dev up, then open a new conversation.
Not every agent supports commands, so these only exist for Claude Code, as files in .claude/commands/ plus a definition list in CLAUDE.md. Most of them gate what the agent can do in a turn, so brainstorming or summarising happens without touching files and writes stay behind an explicit go ahead. Kill or change them to suit your workflow.
/flow is the odd one out. It reads specs from the separate flows repo and compares them against this one instead of working from the code alone, so it needs to know where that repo lives. A git ignored CLAUDE.local.md is the place for that.
Rules aren't universal. Cursor picks up .ai/rules natively by glob, but Claude has no such concept. The Boost guidelines import .ai/rules/index.md, so the index does get loaded, but the rule files it points at don't. Reaching those is just an instruction the agent is asked to follow, so don't assume they were picked up.