Testing Can be Joyful with Pest 4! The Artisan of the Day is Nuno Maduro.
If it starts with “P” and makes your life as a PHP developer easier, odds are Nuno Maduro built it.
Nuno is the creator of tools like Pest, Pint, Pail, Larastan, Laravel Zero, PHP Insights, OpenAI for PHP, and more. His work has collectively been downloaded over 500 million times.
He’s part of Laravel's core team, a relentless open-source maintainer, and a joyful presence in the Community. His energy on Twitter, YouTube, or live on stage is strong, yet full of gratitude and humility. Every release feels like a celebration with Nuno.
He’s also the founder of PHP Portugal, helping organize and uplift the PHP community in his home country.
He wrote the initial version of Pest on the plane home from his first Laracon US. No permission, clearly of the same philosophy as Aaron Francis.
Pest 4: A Talk That Changed How We Test
At Laracon US, Nuno debuted Pest 4 and brought browser testing into the Laravel world with the same elegance and delight that Pest brought to unit tests.
What Pest 4 introduces:
- Playwright-powered browser tests, built into Pest. No setup friction. No separate folder. Just
->visit()and go. - Full Laravel integration: Use
assertAuthenticatedAs(),Notification::fake(), and database factories right in your browser tests. No more limitations. - Debugging built-in: Add
->debug()to pause your test and inspect the browser, or->tinker()to drop into the backend at any point. - Smoke testing reimagined: Scan every route for status codes, JavaScript errors, and console logs with one method:
assertNoSmoke(). - Visual testing: Pest takes screenshots, detects UI regressions, and gives you a slider to see pixel differences, even across devices, themes, or viewports.
- Sharding: Split tests to reduce continuous integration time. In Laravel Cloud, CI dropped from 10 minutes to 2 minutes.
Nuno ended his talk with thanks to contributors, a shoutout to his wife, and a promise: Pest 4 ships August 21 at Laravel Live Denmark.
You could feel the room leaning forward. It wasn’t just a demo. It was a vision for what Laravel testing can be.
Your Story Belongs Here
You don’t need to have a course, a talk, or a big launch. If Laravel has been part of your journey (a pivot, a side project, a moment of growth), we’d love to hear about it!
Answer Taylor’s questions at laravel.com/stories.
We’re always looking to feature developers from every corner of the community. Beginners, builders, behind-the-scenes folks. If Laravel helped you do something you’re proud of, that’s a story worth telling.