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Lite Apps — The Setup Contract ​

Leaf modules are configured automatically in MVC apps: mvc-core knows where views, storage, and the database live, so it wires every module at boot. A lite app has no imposed structure, so there is nowhere for Leaf to safely assume paths — you write that wiring yourself, once, at the top of index.php. This is by design, not a gap. This file is the complete contract: what MVC would have configured for you, in copy-paste form.

A lite app that uses the database, views, and Vite starts like this:

php
<?php

require __DIR__ . '/vendor/autoload.php';

db()->connect([
    'dbtype' => 'sqlite',
    'dbname' => __DIR__ . '/db.sqlite',
]);

// Lite views live in `views/`, not the MVC default of `app/views/`.
// Without `views.cache`, compiled blade files land in the project root.
app()->config('views.path', 'views');
app()->config('views.cache', __DIR__ . '/storage/cache');

// ... routes ...

app()->run();

Newly scaffolded apps (cli 5.0.6+) get the views config written into index.php by leaf view:install. Everything below is per-module detail.

Database ​

db()->connect([...]) once, before any query. Every module that needs the database (auth, session-on-db, etc.) picks up this connection automatically — connect is the only wiring auth needs in a lite app.

Auth ​

Session-only auth needs no signing secret (auth 5.1.2+) — tokens are only minted if you read them, and reading them without a secret tells you exactly what to set. Remember that lite apps do NOT load .env files (no dotenv loader ships), so AUTH_TOKEN_SECRET=... in a file does nothing: export it in the real environment or set token.secret in config. Point the middleware redirects at routes you actually have: auth()->config(['redirect.login' => '/login', 'redirect.guest' => '/']) — the defaults are MVC scaffold paths. And validate registration input yourself with request()->validate() before calling auth()->register(); auth only checks credentials and uniqueness.

Views (Blade / BareUI / Inertia) ​

views.path tells every engine where templates live; views.cache is where compiled blade goes (inertia 5.0.1+ defaults it to storage/cache and creates it, but setting it explicitly keeps the path intentional). Inertia's root shell is views/_inertia.blade.php, written by leaf view:install.

Vite ​

leafs/vite 5.0.1+ defaults match a root-served lite app: the hot file and build/ directory in the project root, assets served from /build. If your layout differs (or you are on 5.0), configure it explicitly:

php
\Leaf\Vite::config([
    'hotFile' => __DIR__ . '/hot',  // written by the dev server when running
    'build' => 'build',             // filesystem path, relative to cwd — never absolute
    'assets' => '/build',           // the URL prefix browsers request
]);

leaf install schema works in lite apps — it brings its own database layer. Wire it with an Illuminate connection and you get the same YAML schema files MVC uses, instead of hand-writing CREATE TABLE:

php
$capsule = new \Illuminate\Database\Capsule\Manager();
$capsule->addConnection(['driver' => 'sqlite', 'database' => __DIR__ . '/db.sqlite']);
$capsule->setAsGlobal();
$capsule->bootEloquent();

\Leaf\Schema::setDbConnection($capsule);
\Leaf\Schema::migrate(__DIR__ . '/database/users.yml');   // one call per schema file

Run that from a small migrate.php script (or a guarded route in dev). Schema file format, column types, and seeds are documented in mvc.md — the format is identical in lite apps.

What stays MVC-only ​

g:*, scaffold:*, and db:* console commands need the MVC console and do not exist in lite apps (leaf up migrates you to MVC when you want them). Everything else — auth, session, cookies, mail, cors, cache, date, fs — works in lite apps with no wiring beyond the database connection above.