Mohammed Baobaid
A polished Windows Terminal setup for Laravel and PHP development environments that saves repeated local setup time.
MBS Terminal is a Windows development-environment project created after noticing how much time disappears when every machine, shell, and fresh setup needs the same terminal profile, prompt, PHP tooling, Composer setup, Laravel shortcuts, and restore path rebuilt by hand.
This audio is not a word-for-word copy of the case below. You can read the written case while listening to me explain the project in more detail.
Role
Open-source maintainer, Windows tooling builder, and Laravel developer-experience designer
Outcome
I packaged my preferred Laravel-ready terminal environment into a visual setup wizard, restore utility, PowerShell installer, Starship prompt config, Windows Terminal profile, pixel icon set, Laravel shortcuts, autocomplete behavior, and advanced documentation so the setup can be reused instead of repeated manually.
The recurring friction was not one hard setup step. It was the pile-up of small ones: choosing a terminal profile, wiring Starship, making PHP and Composer available, remembering Laravel shortcuts, cleaning directory output, adding icons, and still having a safe way to undo everything. Repeating that work on every development environment made the terminal feel like maintenance instead of leverage.
I treated the terminal setup as a productized developer-experience workflow. The GUI handles the guided path, install.ps1 performs the actual configuration, Starship owns the prompt, PowerShell helpers own Laravel shortcuts and navigation behavior, Windows Terminal settings carry the visual shell, and the restore utility gives the setup a safe exit path. The repository keeps all of those pieces documented and versioned together.
I created MBS Terminal because setting up a comfortable Laravel development terminal was taking a little too much time each time I moved to a fresh environment. The project turns that repeated manual setup into a reusable installer with clear defaults and a restore path.
The setup wizard gives the project a friendly install surface, but the real work stays scriptable in install.ps1. That keeps the project approachable for normal use and still inspectable for developers who want to review or adjust what is being changed.
The bundled PowerShell helpers focus on commands I use constantly in Laravel projects: pa migrate, pat, pclear, proutes, ptinker, ldev, and nr dev. They reduce typing without hiding the underlying Laravel command model.
The Starship prompt surfaces the information that matters during development: directory, branch, Laravel project detection, PHP, Node, package context, command duration, and time. The MBS Midnight palette keeps contrast high while making different file and prompt states easier to scan.
The project adds a cleaner ls table, type-aware colors, hidden-file controls, file-only and directory-only filters, and an interactive folder navigator through empty cd or ls -nav. These are small touches, but they remove friction from the commands that happen all day.
The installer can optionally help with PHP 8.2, 8.3, 8.4, or 8.5, Composer, Laravel Installer, Valet for Windows, Laravel Pint, Envoy, Vapor CLI, Starship, and existing PHP directories from Laragon, XAMPP, Herd, or a custom build. That makes the project useful for both clean machines and already-partial setups.
Terminal customization can feel risky when it touches profiles and settings. MBS Terminal includes a restore executable and restore-default.ps1 so Windows Terminal settings, PowerShell profile hooks, Starship config, helpers, and icons can be backed up and moved aside if the user wants to return to defaults.
I build systems like this for teams that need reliable engineering, clean interfaces, and measurable outcomes.
Mohammed Assistant
Answers from my portfolio
AI-generated voice