Tinkering

Tinkering is a Visual Studio Code extension that allows you to run Laravel Tinker easily from within VSCode.
It provides a dedicated playground for PHP code execution, CodeLens for running scripts, and a play button in the editor title for quick execution.

A simple and convenient way to run Laravel Tinker directly inside VSCode, avoiding the complexity of writing commands manually in the terminal.

Features

• Create a Playground: Automatically creates a .tinkering/playground.php file in your Laravel project where you can write Tinker code.
• Run PHP Files with Tinker: Execute any PHP file inside the .tinkering/ folder using Laravel Tinker.
• CodeLens Integration: Displays a “Run Playground” link above your code for quick execution.
• Editor Title Button: Shows a play icon in the top-right corner of the editor for files in .tinkering/.
• SQL Query Logging: Outputs SQL queries, bindings, and execution time in a readable format in the terminal.
• Keyboard Shortcuts:
  • Ctrl+Alt+I: Initialize playground
  • Ctrl+Alt+R: Run current file

Installation

1. Install the extension.
2. Press CTRL+Shift+P / CMD+Shift+P.
3. Search "Laravel Tinkering: init Playground".
4. After Run "init Playground" will create new folder .tinkering and file playground.php
5. Open playground.php and try run your code like example below.
6. Keyboard Shortcut = Ctrl+Alt+I: Initialize playground | Ctrl+Alt+R: Run current file

Example

1. Playground File

// .tinkering/playground.php
use App\Models\User;

// Retrieve User
User::where('email','author@example.com')->get();

2. Output

[SQL] select * from `users` where `email` = ?
[Bindings: author@example.com]
[Time: 3.59 ms]
----------------------------
= Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection {#2065
    all: [
      App\Models\User {#6626
        id: 1,
        name: "John Author",
        email: "author@example.com",
        email_verified_at: null,
        #password: "$2y$12$8dXcRyxRmDyOpTaeqvnzpeeteYZKIIn6Hs7/m0fuuhP/CBvUBWA7e",
        #remember_token: null,
        created_at: "2025-08-13 02:35:02",
        updated_at: "2025-08-13 02:35:02",
      },
    ],
  }