rokkay/symfony-boost

Symfony Boost Bundle

Symfony Boost is a lightweight Symfony bundle that ships an MCP (Model Context Protocol) Server and a set of conventions to supercharge AI‑assisted development for Symfony projects. It is designed to work hand‑in‑hand with symfony/mcp-bundle, exposing your application’s context and safe tooling so AI agents (IDE copilots, chat assistants, or CI bots) can generate Symfony‑idiomatic code and perform routine maintenance tasks confidently.

Status: Experimental. API and conventions may evolve ahead of a 1.0 release.

Highlights

• First‑class MCP Server for Symfony via symfony/mcp-bundle.
• Sensible defaults: curated capabilities and safe tools for code generation and refactoring.
• Symfony‑aware prompts, scaffolds, and guardrails for common components (Controllers, Commands, Forms, Messages, Validators, Doctrine, HTTP‑Kernel, etc.).
• Documentation and patterns to keep AI changes maintainable, testable, and secure.

Requirements

• PHP >= 8.3
• Symfony 6.4 or 7.x components (tested with 7.x)

See composer.json for exact constraints.

Installation

composer require rokkay/symfony-boost --dev

Why --dev? The MCP server and AI tooling are typically used in development, CI, or local automation contexts.

Bundle registration

If you use Symfony Flex, the bundle will be auto‑enabled. Otherwise, add it manually to your config/bundles.php:

return [
    // ...
    Rokkay\SymfonyBoostBundle\RokkaySymfonyBoostBundle::class => ['all' => true],
];

What the MCP Server provides

Through the MCP protocol, an AI client can:

• Inspect project structure (safe, read‑only file discovery and snippets)
• Propose code changes as patches with justification
• Generate Symfony‑aware scaffolding (controllers, commands, DTOs, message handlers, etc.)
• Run read‑only diagnostics (container‑lint, router:match, debug:container) and summarize
• Run guarded test commands (phpunit subsets) and parse results

All mutating actions are designed to be explicit, reviewable, and limited to allowed paths.

Using with AI Clients

Most modern AI tools with MCP client support can connect to this server. Typical configurations:

  "mcpServers":
  {
    "symfony-boost": {
      "command": "php",
      "args": [
        "/your/full/path/to/bin/console",
        "boost:mcp"
      ]
    }
  }

Once connected, the assistant will discover capabilities and available tools automatically.

Boosting AI‑assisted development: Recommended Practices

• Keep the context rich and current
  • Ensure composer.json and symfony.lock/composer.lock are up‑to‑date so the assistant understands dependencies.
  • Prefer small, focused PRs; AI diff review works best with limited scope.
• Codify constraints
  • Use PHPStan and PHPUnit; expose their commands via the MCP diagnostic tools.
  • Adopt Rector or PHP CS Fixer for refactor/format, and prefer assistants to output proposed diffs.
• Guide the assistant
  • Provide clear intents: feature description, public API, and acceptance criteria.
  • Link to domain rules, ADRs, or docs; put them under docs/ so the MCP read‑only tools can fetch them.
• Be explicit with write permissions
  • Restrict write paths to src/ and tests/ unless necessary.
  • Require justification for any file deletion or moves.
• Validate every change
  • Run phpunit and static analysis before merging.
  • Prefer “apply patch” flows over unrestricted file write operations.

Example workflows

1. Generate a controller and test

• Ask your MCP client: “Create a Controller FooController with route /foo returning JSON, and a corresponding functional test.”
• The assistant proposes files under src/Controller and tests/Functional with a git‑style patch.
• You review and apply via your IDE.

2. Debug a failing route

• “List routes matching GET /api/users/42 and explain controller resolution.”
• The assistant runs bin/console debug:router | grep users (or an internal route matching tool) and summarizes.

3. Safe refactor

• “Extract service UserPasswordUpgrader, update DI wiring, and adjust consumers. Provide a patch and run PHPUnit subset for security.”

Development

• Install dev tools:
  • composer install
  • vendor/bin/phpstan analyse
  • vendor/bin/phpunit
• Local MCP server:
  • php bin/console mcp:serve

Contributions are welcome. Please open issues with detailed repro steps and proposed improvements to MCP capabilities or guardrails.

Versioning and Stability

This bundle follows semantic versioning when possible. Until 1.0, minor releases may contain breaking changes. Pin versions in CI if stability is critical.

Security

Never expose your development MCP server to the public internet without proper authentication and network controls. Restrict write paths and prefer patch/diff flows.

License

Licensed under the MIT License. See .

Credits

• MCP foundation: symfony/mcp-bundle and symfony/mcp-sdk
• Author: @rokkay