Rig vs Laravel Herd
Laravel Herd is a polished PHP and Laravel runtime on your Mac. Rig is the control plane for every process around that site — Vite, queues, APIs, and AI tools. Use Herd (or Valet) for PHP itself. Use Rig when you need one window for the rest of the stack, unified logs, port reclaim, and an MCP hub so Cursor or Claude can see what is running. Herd does not replace that, and Rig does not replace Herd's PHP version switching or site runtime. Many studios run both: Herd serves PHP, Rig starts sidecars and watches them. Choose Herd alone if your work is one Laravel site and nothing else. Choose Rig when the morning boot is more than php artisan serve.
- Herd owns PHP / Laravel runtime
- Rig owns process control, logs, ports, and MCP
- Many studios run both