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Engineering,
taught &
leadership, practised.

I'm Steven — CTO at Digitonic, a PHP engineer since 2010 and a keen golfer with a terrible handicap. This is where I write it all down.

Read the latest About me

Order.php

// app/Domain/Trading
final class Order extends AggregateRoot
{
    public function place(Money $total)
    {
        $this->recordThat(new OrderPlaced(
            total: $total->amount(),
        ));

        return $this;
    }
}

● all tests passing PHPStan level 10 Laravel 13

Steven Richardson

CTO, Digitonic · Laravel Certified

HCP 18

The Irvine Golf Club

Shipped with —

…and a few friends I can't name.

THE WRITING

Latest from the journal

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FEATURED php

PHP 8.4: Chain Methods on new Without the Extra Parentheses

PHP 8.4 drops the wrapper parentheses around new, so (new Foo())->bar() becomes new Foo()->bar(). Here's the one rule to remember and the precedence traps to avoid.

June 30th, 2026 · 6 min read

laravel

Laravel AI SDK Tool Calling: Let the Model Run Your PHP

Give a Laravel AI agent real abilities: typed PHP tools the model can call to look up data, with enum-constrained inputs and a hard cap on runaway loops.

June 29th, 2026 · 7 min

tailwind

Tailwind Subgrid: Align Card Grids to a Parent Grid

Stop hard-coding card heights or measuring them with JavaScript. Tailwind's grid-rows-subgrid lets cards inherit the parent grid's rows so titles, bodies, and footers align across the whole row.

June 28th, 2026 · 6 min

/NOW

Currently shipping, reading, and thinking about.

See the full Now page

Building

A SaaS product on Laravel Cloud for Investor Relations teams.

Writing

A series of AI engineering articles.

Reading

"Life 3.0 - Being human in the age of artificial intellegence" by Max Tegmark.

Golfing

The Irvine Golf Club on Sundays, regardless of weather.

Engineering, taught & leadership, practised.