PHPantom for Claude Code

A Claude Code plugin that gives Claude real-time PHP code intelligence via PHPantom, a fast PHP language server written in Rust with Laravel and PHPStan-aware type inference.

With the plugin installed, Claude sees diagnostics as it edits, and can use go-to-definition, find-references, hover types, and completion while working in your PHP project, the same code intelligence the PHPantom editor extensions provide.

What you get

• Instant diagnostics after every edit (unknown classes/members, argument count mismatches, unused imports, deprecations, and more).
• Code navigation: go to definition, find references, hover types.
• Framework awareness: Laravel Eloquent relationships, scopes, casts, and PHPStan generics and conditional return types.
• Project-wide CLI operations. While the plugin is enabled, phpantom_lsp is on Claude's PATH, and a bundled skill tells Claude when to use it: whole project type-coverage reports (phpantom_lsp analyze) and automated fixes across many files (phpantom_lsp fix), all from static analysis.
• Refactors that update the whole project. phpantom_lsp move renames a class or moves a whole namespace, rewriting declarations, imports, references, and PSR-4 file paths in one pass, so Claude no longer has to approximate it with a search and replace. Claude previews with --dry-run before applying, and the command reports what it could not reach on its own, a class named in a Blade template or a directory spelled out inside a path string, with the file and line to fix by hand.
• A php -l syntax check run automatically after Claude edits a .php file, so a syntax error is caught and surfaced immediately (skipped when php or jq is not installed).

Requirements

• Claude Code v2.1.0 or later (for LSP plugin support).
• PHPantom 0.11.0 or later, installed so that phpantom_lsp is on your PATH. The plugin doesn't include the language server and doesn't download it for you.

You do not need Docker or PHP: the language server is a single static binary.

Install

Install the language server with one of:

brew install phpantom-lsp             # macOS and Linux
cargo binstall phpantom_lsp           # prebuilt binary, via cargo-binstall
cargo install phpantom_lsp --locked   # build from source

or download the archive for your platform from GitHub Releases and put the phpantom_lsp binary in a directory on your PATH. Whichever you use, that directory (for example ~/.cargo/bin) must be on the PATH of the shell you start Claude Code from.

Then add this marketplace and install the plugin:

/plugin marketplace add PHPantom-dev/phpantom_claude
/plugin install phpantom@phpantom

Then restart Claude Code. Open a PHP file and the language server starts automatically.

Using a binary that isn't on your PATH

If you build PHPantom yourself or keep the binary somewhere else, set PHPANTOM_SERVER_PATH to its absolute path before starting Claude Code. The launcher then runs that binary instead of looking on your PATH.

Upgrading from an earlier version of this plugin

Earlier versions of this plugin downloaded phpantom_lsp for you into ~/.cache/phpantom-lsp. That copy is no longer used: install the language server as described above, and you can delete that directory.

How it works

Claude Code launches bin/phpantom_lsp as the language server and speaks LSP over its stdin/stdout. The wrapper finds the phpantom_lsp you installed ($PHPANTOM_SERVER_PATH, then your PATH) and execs it, so the protocol stream passes straight through. It never downloads anything; if no binary is found it prints install instructions and exits. The same wrapper is on the Bash tool's PATH, so Claude can also invoke phpantom_lsp analyze, phpantom_lsp fix, and phpantom_lsp move for whole-project work. The server performs static analysis only; it never runs your PHP application.

Editor extensions

If you also use an editor, PHPantom ships first-party extensions for VS Code / Cursor and Zed that provide the same analysis.

Privacy

This plugin runs entirely on your machine and makes no network requests, with no analytics or telemetry. See PRIVACY.md.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.