Why LaraOwl?

LaraOwl is a open-source, self-hosted monitoring platform built specifically for Laravel applications. Unlike SaaS alternatives, you deploy it on your own infrastructure — your data never leaves your servers.

Drop in a single Composer package on any Laravel app, point it at your LaraOwl server, and instantly get real-time dashboards for requests, exceptions, queries, jobs, and more.

Screenshots

Features

Full-Stack Observability

Real-Time Dashboard

• Live updates via WebSockets (Laravel Reverb) — no page refresh needed
• Interactive charts with time-series breakdowns (Recharts)
• Flexible time filters — 1h, 24h, 7d, 14d, 30d, or custom date ranges
• Per-page pagination that preserves active filters

User Tracking

• Authenticated vs. guest request breakdown
• Per-user request volume, error rates, and last-seen timestamps
• User activity drill-down with full request history

Uptime Monitoring

• Automatic health checks every 30 seconds
• Status code tracking with response time history
• Instant alerts when your site goes down

Heartbeat Monitoring

• Cron job and scheduled task health verification
• Configurable check-in intervals
• Alerts when a heartbeat stops reporting

Security & Threat Detection

• Built-in WAF analysis — detects SQL injection, XSS, path traversal, command injection, LFI/RFI
• Risk scoring engine with configurable thresholds (Medium / High / Critical)
• IP-based threat tracking with automatic pattern recognition
• Security audit dashboard with threat timeline

Cloudflare Integration

• Direct Cloudflare API connection for WAF management
• Firewall rule CRUD from the dashboard
• Traffic analytics and audit log visualization
• One-click IP blocking

Alerting & Integrations

Send alerts to the channels your team already uses:

Alert triggers:

• New exception detected
• High latency / slow performance
• Uptime down
• Heartbeat failure
• Error spike (configurable window & threshold)
• Throttle control to prevent alert fatigue

Performance Thresholds

Set custom performance budgets per project:

• Route response time limits
• Job execution time limits
• Query execution time limits
• Command runtime limits
• Automatic issue creation when thresholds are exceeded

Data Retention

• Per-project retention policies — 1, 3, 7, 14, 30, 60, 90 days, or never delete
• Automatic daily pruning

Multi-Tenant Architecture

• Teams with role-based access
• Multiple projects per team
• Per-project settings, API tokens, and integrations
• Team invitations via email

Asynchronous Ingestion

• All incoming data is processed via Laravel Queues
• Zero-latency API responses — data is queued immediately
• Broadcasting happens in the background worker

AI Agent Access (MCP)

• Model Context Protocol server so AI coding agents can work with your data
• Read projects, list and inspect issues, and query telemetry
• Update issue status and comment on issues from the agent
• Scoped to the user's teams with Sanctum tokens; record output is sanitized

Quick Start

For the full guide — installation, configuration, and troubleshooting — see the LaraOwl Documentation.

Server Installation

Choose one of the following methods to install the LaraOwl server:

Docker

This project comes with a custom Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml for easy deployment. To get started:

Changes in .env for docker configuration:

First copy the production environment file:

cp .env.prod .env

Then update the following variables in .env:

APP_URL=https://your-production-domain.com
APP_HOSTNAME=your-production-domain.com
REVERB_APP_ID=000000
REVERB_APP_KEY=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
REVERB_APP_SECRET=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The docker-compose.yaml file already has the correct service names for db, redis, and reverb. You only need to change the hostname and database credentials if you want to customize them.

Starting Production server

Use the following command to start the server in production mode:

docker compose up -d --build

The server will be available at https://your-production-domain.com. Make sure your DNS resolves for ws.your-production-domain.com and your-production-domain.com. Caddy will automatically fetch and renew SSL certificates for your domain.

You can add a simple user through a tinker sessions with the following command:

docker compose exec -ti app /bin/bash

Then run the following commands to start a tinker session:

php artisan tinker

And then create a admin user.

App\Models\User::updateOrCreate(
    ['email' => 'admin@laraowl.com'],
    ['name' => 'Admin', 'password' => bcrypt('changeme')]
);

Using Composer

Requirements:

• PHP 8.3+
• Node.js 18+
• Composer
• MySQL 8.0+ or PostgreSQL
• A queue worker

composer create-project laraowl/laraowl laraowl
cd laraowl

Once the files are ready, complete the setup:

# Install frontend dependencies
npm install

# Environment setup
cp .env.example .env
php artisan key:generate

# Configure your database in .env, then:
php artisan migrate

# Build frontend assets
npm run build

# Start the server
php artisan serve

Required Background Processes

LaraOwl needs these processes running alongside the web server:

# Process queued records (required)
php artisan queue:work

# WebSocket server for real-time updates (required)
php artisan reverb:start

# Scheduler for uptime checks & data pruning (required)
php artisan schedule:work

Client Integration

1. Install the Client Package

In the Laravel application you want to monitor:

composer require laraowl/client

2. Configure

Run the interactive setup command:

php artisan laraowl:install

Or manually add to your .env:

LARAOWL_SERVER_URL=https://your-laraowl-server.com
LARAOWL_TOKEN=your_project_api_token

You can find the API token in Project Settings → API Keys within the LaraOwl dashboard.

3. Optional: Send Logs

To forward application logs to LaraOwl:

LOG_STACK=stack,laraowl

That's it. Your application will immediately begin sending telemetry data to the LaraOwl server.

Connect an AI Agent (MCP)

LaraOwl exposes a Model Context Protocol server so AI coding agents can read projects, triage issues and query telemetry on your behalf. Every tool is scoped to your teams.

Generate a token from Settings → MCP Tokens, or via Artisan:

php artisan laraowl:mcp-token user@example.com --name=mcp

Then point your agent at the server. For Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http laraowl https://your-laraowl-server.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <token>"

Available tools: list-projects, list-issues, get-issue, query-telemetry, update-issue-status, comment-on-issue.

Architecture

┌──────────────────┐         HTTPS POST          ┌──────────────────────┐
│  Your Laravel    │  ──────────────────────────▶ │  LaraOwl Server      │
│  Application     │     /api/ingest              │                      │
│                  │     (API Token Auth)         │  ┌────────────────┐  │
│  laraowl/client  │                              │  │ IngestController│  │
│  package         │                              │  └───────┬────────┘  │
└──────────────────┘                              │          │           │
                                                  │    Queue Dispatch    │
                                                  │          │           │
                                                  │  ┌───────▼────────┐  │
                                                  │  │ ProcessIngested │  │
                                                  │  │ Records (Job)  │  │
                                                  │  └───────┬────────┘  │
                                                  │          │           │
                                                  │  ┌───────▼────────┐  │
                                                  │  │ IngestService   │  │
                                                  │  │ • Store records │  │
                                                  │  │ • Group issues  │  │
                                                  │  │ • Check threats │  │
                                                  │  │ • Fire alerts   │  │
                                                  │  └───────┬────────┘  │
                                                  │          │           │
                                                  │    WebSocket Push    │
                                                  │    (Reverb)          │
                                                  │          │           │
                                                  │  ┌───────▼────────┐  │
                                                  │  │ React Dashboard │  │
                                                  │  │ (Inertia + SSR) │  │
                                                  │  └────────────────┘  │
                                                  └──────────────────────┘

Data flow:

1. The client package hooks into Laravel's service container and captures requests, exceptions, queries, jobs, etc.
2. Captured data is sent via authenticated HTTP POST to the server's /api/ingest endpoint.
3. The server immediately queues the payload and responds with 200 OK (zero processing delay).
4. A queue worker processes the records: stores them, calculates fingerprints for grouping, runs security analysis, and checks alert thresholds.
5. A WebSocket event (ProjectDataIngested) is broadcast so the dashboard updates in real-time.

Production Deployment

Environment Variables

Key variables to configure for production:

APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://your-domain.com

# Database
DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=127.0.0.1
DB_DATABASE=laraowl
DB_USERNAME=laraowl
DB_PASSWORD=your-secure-password

# Queue (use Redis for best performance)
QUEUE_CONNECTION=redis

# Broadcasting
BROADCAST_CONNECTION=reverb

# Reverb WebSocket
REVERB_HOST="your-domain.com"
REVERB_PORT=8080
REVERB_SCHEME=https

Process Management (Supervisor)

Example Supervisor configuration for the queue worker:

[program:laraowl-queue]
process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
command=php /path/to/laraowl/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
autostart=true
autorestart=true
stopasgroup=true
killasgroup=true
numprocs=2
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/log/laraowl/queue.log

[program:laraowl-reverb]
command=php /path/to/laraowl/artisan reverb:start
autostart=true
autorestart=true
redirect_stderr=true
stdout_logfile=/var/log/laraowl/reverb.log

Scheduler (Cron)

Add to your server's crontab:

* * * * * cd /path/to/laraowl && php artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

This handles:

• Uptime checks — every 30 seconds
• Data pruning — daily cleanup based on retention settings

Dashboard Sections

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

License

LaraOwl is open-source software licensed under the Apache License 2.0.