Every Laravel upgrade with Shift works the same way - Shift opens a pull request with a series of nice, atomic commits. Each commit represents a distinct changeset — reviewing core files, refactoring deprecated APIs, bumping Composer and NPM dependencies, and adopting new conventions.
But alongside those commits, Shift also leaves comments. For a long time, I viewed these comments as a failure. Or at least a chance I could automate more. But the choice to leave a comment rather than make changes is deliberate. I don't want to make a change that would undermine the integrity of Shift.
A confident wrong change is far worse than no change at all. So when there's risk of a false positive — Shift leaves a comment. These are typically small changes, or changes that may not even need to be made. But they are still a manual step in an otherwise automated process. Again, I'd love to automate them too. Now, with AI, I can.
Automate More with AI
Any actionable comment Shift leaves now includes a new "✨ Automate more with AI..." section inside the comment. This is an expandable section with a curated, ready-to-copy prompt.
Paste this prompt into your AI of choice — Claude, Codex, OpenCode, whatever you prefer — and let it automate. The prompt includes full context about what changed, what the risk is, and specific instructions for inspecting your codebase to determine the right fix.
For example, the Laravel 13.x Shift leaves a comment warning the default values for CACHE_PREFIX, REDIS_PREFIX, and SESSION_COOKIE have changed, and that if you're not setting these explicitly, you could experience cache or session invalidation after upgrading. This comment leaves a copyable AI prompt to check your config files and .env, determine whether you're relying on the old defaults, and suggest the exact values to add to preserve your previous behavior.
Not AI versus Shift
A natural reaction to this is: "Can't you just point AI at the Upgrade Guide and skip Shift entirely?" You could. But it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. Said another way, you won't get the same result.
The Upgrade Guide exists to make your app compatible with the latest version. Shift's goal is different: to make your app look like it has always been running the latest version.
That means core file changes, adopting modern conventions, bumping third-party dependencies — things that go well beyond the Upgrade Guide. Doing the same level of work with AI alone takes significant time (and tokens). It also requires knowing about all changes in the release. Many of which are not documented anywhere.
The curated Shift comments help guide AI to a better result. They give it the additional context and focus to make the nice, atomic change - just like Shift does.
Best of both
Shift automates everything it can determine with certainty. When it can't, it now hands you exactly what you need to let AI finish the job. To automate that last mile.
The result is a fully automated Laravel upgrade. But also, a complete and thorough upgrade you have confidence in.