Getting Started With Laravel Prism: Add AI to Any Laravel App in Minutes

Every time I've needed to add AI to a Laravel app, I've ended up with a pile of vendor-specific SDK calls scattered through controllers and services. Switch from OpenAI to Anthropic? Rewrite half your codebase. Prism fixes that. It's a Laravel-native AI package with a fluent, provider-agnostic interface — and it takes about five minutes to get running.

Installing Laravel Prism AI#

Prism supports Laravel 11, 12, and 13, and requires PHP 8.2 or higher. Install via Composer:

composer require prism-php/prism

Then publish the config:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=prism-config

This drops a config/prism.php file into your project. You'll configure your providers there.

Configuring Your Providers#

Add your API keys to .env:

OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

Prism picks these up automatically via the published config. The relevant section of config/prism.php looks like this out of the box:

'providers' => [
    'anthropic' => [
        'api_key' => env('ANTHROPIC_API_KEY', ''),
        'version' => env('ANTHROPIC_API_VERSION', '2023-06-01'),
    ],
    'openai' => [
        'url'          => env('OPENAI_URL', 'https://api.openai.com/v1'),
        'api_key'      => env('OPENAI_API_KEY', ''),
        'organization' => env('OPENAI_ORGANIZATION', null),
    ],
    'ollama' => [
        'url' => env('OLLAMA_URL', 'http://localhost:11434/v1'),
    ],
    // ...
],

You only need to set keys for the providers you actually use. Everything else can stay as-is.

Your First AI Call with Laravel Prism#

Here's the simplest possible text generation call — summarising a blog post body using OpenAI:

use Prism\Prism\Facades\Prism;
use Prism\Prism\Enums\Provider;

$response = Prism::text()
    ->using(Provider::OpenAI, 'gpt-4o-mini')
    ->withSystemPrompt('You are a helpful assistant that summarises content concisely.')
    ->withPrompt("Summarise this post in two sentences:\n\n{$post->body}")
    ->asText();

echo $response->text;

The ->asText() call fires the request and returns a TextResponse object. $response->text contains the generated string.

If you want to log token usage:

$usage = $response->firstStep()->usage;

logger('AI usage', [
    'prompt_tokens'     => $usage->promptTokens,
    'completion_tokens' => $usage->completionTokens,
]);

There's no totalTokens shortcut — you sum them yourself if needed. Worth knowing before you go hunting for a property that isn't there.

Swapping Providers Without Changing Business Code#

This is Prism's main selling point. To run the exact same call through Anthropic instead of OpenAI, change two arguments:

$response = Prism::text()
    ->using(Provider::Anthropic, 'claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022') // <- swap here
    ->withSystemPrompt('You are a helpful assistant that summarises content concisely.')
    ->withPrompt("Summarise this post in two sentences:\n\n{$post->body}")
    ->asText();

echo $response->text;

Everything else stays identical. Your controller, your service class, your tests — none of it changes. In practice I reach for this when I want to compare output quality between providers, or when I need to fall back to a local Ollama model in development.

You can also pass the provider as a plain string if you'd rather not import the enum:

->using('openai', 'gpt-4o-mini')
->using('anthropic', 'claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022')
->using('ollama', 'llama3.2')

Both forms work. The enum is safer for IDE support.

Gotchas and Edge Cases#

The API method is ->asText(), not ->generate(). A few older tutorials reference ->generate() — that was the previous API. As of v0.100.x it's ->asText() for text responses and ->asStream() for streaming.

Ollama needs a timeout increase. Local models can be slow. The default request timeout is 30 seconds. Override it per call:

Prism::text()
    ->using('ollama', 'llama3.2')
    ->withClientOptions(['timeout' => 120])
    ->withPrompt($prompt)
    ->asText();

Anthropic is strict about message order. If you're building a conversation with withMessages(), messages must alternate: UserMessage → AssistantMessage → UserMessage. Out-of-order messages will return an error from the API.

Pin your version in production. Prism is actively developed and ships breaking changes. The current stable release is v0.100.x. Lock it in composer.json:

composer require "prism-php/prism:^0.100.0"

Wrapping Up#

Installing Prism, publishing the config, and making your first AI call takes under five minutes. The provider-agnostic API is the real payoff — you can prototype with a cheap OpenAI model and swap to Anthropic or a self-hosted Ollama model without touching your application code. From here, the natural next steps are streaming responses, tool calling for agentic workflows, and structured output for when you need the model to return typed data rather than freeform text.

FAQ#

How do I access token usage after an AI call?

Call $response->firstStep()->usage after asText() returns. This gives you a usage object with promptTokens and completionTokens properties. There's no totalTokens shortcut—sum them yourself if needed. Logging token usage helps track costs across multiple providers.

Can I use Prism with a local Ollama model running on my machine?

Yes—Ollama is built-in. Set OLLAMA_URL in your .env (default is http://localhost:11434/v1) and use Provider::Ollama with a local model name like llama3.2. Note that local models are slower than cloud APIs; increase the request timeout with ->withClientOptions(['timeout' => 120]).

What's the benefit of using Prism instead of calling the OpenAI SDK directly?

Prism abstracts away vendor-specific code. With the OpenAI SDK, switching to Anthropic means rewriting service classes. With Prism, you change two arguments in ->using() and everything else stays identical. The fluent API is also Laravel-idiomatic: no constructor injection of vendor SDKs, just Facades.

Does Prism support streaming responses?

Yes, but this guide covers the basic synchronous asText() path. For streaming, use ->asStream() instead. Streaming is useful for long-form generation or when you want to display tokens to the user as they arrive. See the Prism docs for streaming patterns with Livewire.