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Freek Van der Herten

@freek.bsky.social
3.1K followers 118 following 650 posts

PHP developer at Spatie, built Mailcoach, ‪myray.app‬, ohdear.app and flareapp.io, blogging at ‪freek.dev‬, organising fullstackeurope.com

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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Gamifying my desktop 🙂 #sillysoftwareclub getdaydreaming.com
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
💭 Introducing Daydreaming: a fun little Mac app that will adapt your wallpaper to the current time of day and weather conditions. Free and open source! 👨‍💻 Made this one in two short evenings of vibing getdaydreaming.com
getdaydreaming.com
Daydreaming for Mac
Your picture, made into Mac wallpapers that match the time of day and local weather.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Complaints from our clients reported because of mistakes: 0 Feels very good to have made this move and to have those old projects on modern technology and platform. Next move: conversion to Rust? 😅 🦀
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Moving these old and new projects was pretty wild, in the sense that it was so fast and flawless. It verified prepared DNS records, verified that databases were the same, that all media was the same, testing in browsers... All in parallel for those apps.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Some of these were on ancient versions of Laravel, and a couple... I don't even want to say what they were on 😱. As part of the move, the AI converted them to Laravel 13 in one fell swoop
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
💪 After moving our internal apps over to Laravel Cloud this weekend, my AI buddies and I proceeded to move a big part of our client sites over as well. Spatie has been (and still is) a web agency for almost 20 years, so you can imagine that we've amassed quite a few legacy projects.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
💅 Did a fun little update on our dnsrecords.io site 🤓 Also try typing "lcars" and "mother"
DNS records for the domain freek.dev are displayed, including A, NS, SOA, and TXT records in a terminal interface.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
All of this was done while listening to: - Shebang by Oren Ambarchi - How You Been by SML - Eureka by Jim O'Rourke Take a look yourself: freeksrecords.com Happy browsing!
freeksrecords.com
Freek's records
A lifetime of digging, one shelf at a time. Browse Freek's vinyl collection by artist, decade or genre, and find your next favourite record.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
The site is made with Laravel, but I didn't write a single line 😄. It was mainly an experiment on how easily an AI could deploy this on Laravel Cloud (spoiler: it was very easy; I was impressed).
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
A couple of friends were asking for some music suggestions, so I decided to create a nice site that lists my records so I can share it with them. I was already tracking my collection with Discogs, so the data is coming from that API.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
So in the past year, I started collecting vinyl again and very much enjoy putting them on each and every night I am home. It has nothing to do with sound quality but with the experience of just looking through the collection, picking a record, holding it... making a conscious decision.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Flash forward 15-20 years (!!). Everything is digitized, and AI is sweeping the planet. Because I interact with the digital world so much, I value physical things again and enjoy doing stuff without involving computers.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
I've always loved music. When I was a student, I used to buy vinyl records and really enjoyed playing them. In the iPod era, I stopped getting vinyl because having your music always with you was just so nice.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
🌸 Feels really good to improve Bloom using Bloom
Project management interface shows a "bloom" project with tasks for building and fixing shortcuts, set against a starry backdrop.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
I just sent out a new edition of my newsletter. Since I skipped the summer, it's packed with links to good content on Laravel, PHP and AI. Read it and subscribe for the next editor here: freek.dev/newsletter/...
freek.dev
freek.dev newsletter #207
Freek Van der Herten writes about Laravel, PHP and AI. Co-owner of Spatie, maintainer of 300+ open source packages with over 2 billion downloads.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Both features are powered by Jev Here's a blogpost with some more info: freek.dev/3198-more-j...
freek.dev
More Jev in There There: smart conditions and AI assignment | freek.dev
Recently I wrote about how we use Jev in There There to detect spam, bounces, and automatic replies. Jev reads an incoming email and answers questions we define up front. We keep the probabilities and decide in our own code what counts as a match. The cheap checks on mail headers still run first. That post ended with a promise that we'd find more uses for Jev. Here are two we have since added to There There: smart conditions for workflows, and automatic assignment to a team or person.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
There There can also now assign a ticket to the right person with AI. 👍 Choose the people it may assign to and add a short note about what each handles.
There There workflow editor showing AI choosing among Dries, Jef, Jimi, and Zuzana for ticket assignment.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
💡 There There workflows now have smart conditions. Describe what should match in plain language, like a customer asking for a refund. When it matches, a fixed private note asks someone to review the payment.
There There workflow showing a smart condition for refund requests and a fixed internal note asking someone to review the payment.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
👍 Also, I really feel an app like this must match your personality / preference a bit, so I listed some alternatives on our site
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
And yes, I do think developing in the cloud will be the future (Amp and such), but for local stuff an app like Bloom is nice!
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Try it here: runbloom.app We're doing almost daily releases: here's our changelog: runbloom.app/changelog Oh, we also open-sourced it (again) github.com/spatie/bloom Feedback is most welcome!
runbloom.app
Bloom · Run coding agents in parallel on your Mac
Bloom is a free native Mac app that runs Claude Code and Codex in parallel, each in its own git worktree. Read the diffs, comment inline, open the pull request.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
🌸 These are such remarkable times. Only one month I ago I started work on Bloom, a native MacOS agent orchestrator. It's now my most used app for my daily work. Some of my colleagues are using it too. Less then one year ago I couldn't have dreamt that doing this was possible
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Had to tell it that it couldn't get tired 😄
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
😂 Lol, when of my subagents stopped working because it was getting too late
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
✍️ Here's a quick blogpost with some more details: freek.dev/3194-detect... More Jev powered stuff coming soon, this was the most obvious one that I wanted to get out quick.
freek.dev
Detecting spam and auto-replies with Jev and the Laravel AI SDK | freek.dev
Yesterday Taylor announced that Jev support landed in the 1.x branch of the Laravel AI SDK. We started using it that same day for spam detection in There There. Let's take a look at what Jev is and how you can use it.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
We ask the same about auto-replies and bounces. All three questions go in one request, so they cost the same as asking one. It replaced a hand-maintained list of out-of-office subject prefixes in fifteen languages, plus nine more for bounces.
A list displays different email subject lines with classifications like auto, bounce, and spam alongside numerical scores.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Yesterday, Jev support landed in the Laravel AI SDK. We're now using it in There There to keep spam out of your inbox. Jev isn't an LLM. You give it some state and a yes/no question, and it hands back a probability.
Code snippet shows a PHP function using Laravel's AI Classification to determine if an email is spam with a specified threshold.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Not saying this because I'm afraid of subjects drying up, but as coding evolving to something else, I guess talks and expectations around what people want to see in a talk will evolve too.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Live coding on stage always was fun, launching agents on stage has less showmanship and is it a bit more boring for an audience I think...
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I really like(d) speaking about coding and, but with the age of manual coding getting in the rearview mirror for everyone, I'll have to think a bit of what I'll be centering future talks around.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
I usually prep one or two talks a year and reuse them throughout that year. This was probably the last time I'll give the Proven Package Patterns one.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Here's a recording of the talk I gave at this year's Laravel Live Denmark conference. www.youtube.com/watch?v=22R...
youtube.com
Proven Package Patterns - Freek Van der Herten - Laravel Live Denmark 2026
Proven Package Patterns - Freek Van der HertenPresented at Laravel...
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
You can try it free for 14 days, no credit card needed. there-there.app If you give it a try, I'd love to hear what you think.
there-there.app
AI helpdesk for support teams | There There AI Helpdesk
There There is an AI-assisted but human-led help desk solution that helps you close tickets faster by putting your knowledge and resolved tickets to work on every email and chat message.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Your knowledge lives in a brain: There There crawls your docs, you add articles, and you can publish them as a public help center. It speaks MCP both ways too. Connect tools like Flare or Stripe so the AI can look things up, or connect Claude or ChatGPT to our own MCP server.
Graphic showcases tools for AI integration, featuring "there there" as a central hub, with connections to various platforms and clients.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Today all our own support runs through it: Flare, Mailcoach, Ray, and There There itself. The AI summarizes every ticket and drafts replies from your docs and past conversations, but you always decide what gets sent. Our first paying customers are already on board.
Three customer support tickets discuss issues with coffee products and refunds related to their experiences.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
It's also the first big SaaS we've launched in the age of AI. A lot of its code was generated, but the ideas behind it and the design were crafted by hand. The polish came from using it every day, together with a group of early users who helped us shape it.
A chat interface displays a user's question about caffeine-free beans, with responses providing information on specific products.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
At Spatie we answer a lot of support questions. For years we used other help desks, but they were too expensive, too confusing to use, or just a bit ugly. So we sat down as a team and started building the help desk we'd actually want to use ourselves.
A group of nine people sits around a table with laptops, discussing in a well-lit meeting room featuring a large display.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
🚀 There There, the help desk we've been building at @spatie_be, is ready. 💅 We gave it a full redesign, and anyone can now sign up and start using it. A few words on why we built it 🧵
Support ticket management interface showing various customer issues, with highlighted conversation and action buttons.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
🌸 runbloom.app
runbloom.app
Bloom · Run coding agents in parallel on your Mac
Bloom is a free native Mac app that runs Claude Code and Codex in parallel, each in its own git worktree. Read the diffs, comment inline, open the pull request.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
My colleague Nico contributed this beautiful new tab system to Bloom, which looks much much closer to how tabs look and feel in Safari, Finder, etc...
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
I usually don't add Bloom projects / workspaces manually. I usually ask Bloom to do this for me 🙂 Here's a simple example. Bloom can open up/close projects, workspaces, panes, tabs... It also know what's on it.
A user interface displays project tasks and workspace management options, highlighting actions related to adjusting pagination settings.A project workspace displays code files and instructions for adjusting pagination settings in a Laravel application interface.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
👀 Blooms new menu bar item, available in the latest release It was ready right before my battery died 😅
A menu bar displays usage statistics for various sessions, including remaining time and reset intervals for different features.Settings interface showing options for the Bloom menu bar, including usage figures, provider choices, and sleep features.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
I should do that 🙂
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Reposted by Freek Van der Herten
Elian @elian.codes · 12/09/2026
I've been using Bloom by @freek.bsky.social for the last couple of days over Conductor and it's been a really good experience! Go try it out: runbloom.app
runbloom.app
Bloom · Run coding agents in parallel on your Mac
Bloom is a free native Mac app that runs Claude Code and Codex in parallel, each in its own git worktree. Read the diffs, comment inline, open the pull request.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Try out Bloom (it's free and open source) and let me know what you think of it. runbloom.app
runbloom.app
Bloom · Run coding agents in parallel on your Mac
Bloom is a free native Mac app that runs Claude Code and Codex in parallel, each in its own git worktree. Read the diffs, comment inline, open the pull request.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
🤩 The dream is that Bloom can provision and manage your server, and Laravel projects (in fact, any project) can just run on it. And you can preview your remotely running project via Bloom's browser. 💅 I've already got this working; now I'm polishing it all (still lots of work).
A workspace interface shows a chat about opening a project homepage with Laravel, featuring coding commands and a help desk service.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
So I heard you like letting your agents work remotely, so nothing runs on your Mac. I'll add that to Bloom as well! It will include a wizard to set up your server.
Server setup interface displaying options for remote work management and server connection, emphasizing multi-device access.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
🔄 Building Bloom inside Bloom 💅 Currently improving the Bloom menu bar item. I asked Bloom to open a split pane to show me an HTML preview. It automatically refreshes as we make changes. 👍 Super nice and powerful workflow
A split-screen setup displays a coding application interface, chat messages about menu design, and project files with progress indicators.
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
👀 Reviewing @jimirobaer 's redesign for There There tickets screen Easy to do this in Bloom: I just asked the AI to run the dev server and open up a split next to the chat to display the site. It's hot reloading so I can now type the corrections i want and see the AI fix it
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Freek Van der Herten @freek.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Try it out yourself! ⬇️ runbloom.app
runbloom.app
Bloom · Run coding agents in parallel on your Mac
Bloom is a free native Mac app that runs Claude Code and Codex in parallel, each in its own git worktree. Read the diffs, comment inline, open the pull request.
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