Using EasyAdmin with AI Coding Agents

Installing the Skill

Run the following command in your Symfony application:

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$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:install

The command asks two questions. The first one is which AI coding agents you want to install the skill for. You can select more than one and the agents that your project already uses are preselected.

The second question asks if you want to add a short EasyAdmin section to your AI instructions files (CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md). The answer defaults to yes and that section tells agents to read the skill before working on your backend. See The Project Instructions Block for details.

When the command finishes, it lists all the files it wrote, reminds you to restart your AI coding agent so it picks up the new skill, and shows the Composer script that keeps the skill up to date automatically (see Keeping the Skill Up to Date).

Supported AI Coding Agents

The install command supports the following targets. The option value is the one you pass to --agent, as explained in Installing Without Interaction:

The .agents/skills/ directory is the shared location of the Agent Skills standard. Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Amp and Zed read their skills from it. Claude Code reads its instructions from CLAUDE.md instead of AGENTS.md. Gemini CLI reads GEMINI.md by default, so it ignores the block added to AGENTS.md unless you configure it to load that file too, in the .gemini/settings.json file of your project:

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{
    "context": {
        "fileName": ["AGENTS.md", "GEMINI.md"]
    }
}

To preselect the agents in the first question, the command looks for the following files and directories in your project:

• Claude Code: .claude/ or CLAUDE.md;
• Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, OpenCode and other agents: .agents/, .codex/, .cursor/, .gemini/, opencode.json or .github/copilot-instructions.md;
• JetBrains Junie: .junie/;
• Windsurf: .windsurf/.

When the command doesn't find any of them, it preselects Claude Code and the shared .agents/skills/ directory.

Installing Without Interaction

In scripts and continuous integration workflows you can select the agents with command options instead of answering questions:

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# install the skill for one or more agents
$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:install --agent=claude --agent=agents

# install the skill for all the supported agents
$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:install --all

# install the skill for the detected agents without asking anything
$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:install --no-interaction

The --agent option can be used multiple times and accepts the values claude, agents, junie and windsurf. Any other value makes the command fail and display the list of valid values.

Used on its own, the --no-interaction option installs the skill for the detected agents, or for Claude Code and the shared .agents/skills/ directory when it detects none.

The --agent and --all options only skip the first question. The command still asks the second one, unless you add --no-interaction, which accepts its default answer and adds the EasyAdmin section to your AI instructions files. Add the --skip-guidelines option to leave CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md untouched:

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$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:install --all --skip-guidelines

Keeping the Skill Up to Date

The copies of the skill describe the EasyAdmin version that was installed when you created them. Run the following command after every EasyAdmin update to refresh those copies:

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$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:update

This command never asks anything and never creates new files. It refreshes only the copies that are already installed and it updates the instructions block only in the files that already contain it. To install the skill for an agent that you didn't select before, run easyadmin:ai:install again.

The update command displays no output and returns success when the skill isn't installed anywhere. That's why it's safe to run it automatically after every Composer update. Add it to the post-update-cmd script of your composer.json file, keeping the entries that you already have there:

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{
    "scripts": {
        "post-update-cmd": [
            "@auto-scripts",
            "@php bin/console easyadmin:ai:update"
        ]
    }
}

The command is also silent when deploying to production. Composer defines the COMPOSER_DEV_MODE environment variable with a value of 0 when running composer install --no-dev, and the command exits immediately in that case.

If you prefer to run the update yourself, add the --check option to your continuous integration workflow:

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$ php bin/console easyadmin:ai:update --check

This option writes nothing. It returns 0 when all the installed copies and instructions blocks match the EasyAdmin version of the project, and 1 when any of them is outdated, which makes the build fail until someone runs the update command. The check compares the contents of the files and not the version numbers, so a copy that you changed by hand also counts as outdated.

The Project Instructions Block

Claude Code reads the instructions of your project from a file called CLAUDE.md and the other agents read them from a file called AGENTS.md. When you answer yes to the second question of the install command, EasyAdmin adds a short section to those files, delimited by two markers:

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<easyadmin-guidelines>
This project uses EasyAdmin 5.5.2. Before creating or modifying admin
dashboards, CRUD controllers, fields, actions, filters or their tests,
read and follow the `easyadmin` skill at
`.claude/skills/easyadmin/SKILL.md`.
...
</easyadmin-guidelines>

EasyAdmin owns the text between those markers and nothing else. The rest of the file, including your own instructions, is left exactly as it is. When the file doesn't exist, the install command creates it. The update command never creates it.

Both commands replace the contents of the block on every run, so don't edit the text inside the markers. Write your own instructions outside of the block, as explained in the next section.

Adding Your Own Conventions

The skill describes how EasyAdmin works, but it knows nothing about the conventions of your project. Write them in a section titled ## EasyAdmin conventions of your CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md file, outside the markers of the EasyAdmin block:

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<easyadmin-guidelines>
...
</easyadmin-guidelines>

## EasyAdmin conventions

- All CRUD controllers live in `src/Controller/Admin/` and their tests
  in `tests/Admin/Controller/`.
- Prices are stored in cents and displayed with `MoneyField`.
- Never display the `password` property of the `User` entity.

The skill tells agents to read that section and to apply it on top of the EasyAdmin rules. Because the section is outside the markers, the install and update commands never change it.

Taking Ownership of the Skill

The files copied to your project include two extra lines in the metadata section of their front matter:

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# .claude/skills/easyadmin/SKILL.md
---
name: easyadmin
# ...
metadata:
  author: EasyCorp
  easyadmin-version: '5.5.2'
  installed-by: 'easyadmin:ai:install'
---

The installed-by line tells EasyAdmin that it maintains this copy. Delete that line to make the file yours: from that moment, easyadmin:ai:update ignores the copy and easyadmin:ai:install refuses to overwrite it and stops without writing anything.

Do this when you want to adapt the skill to your project. The drawback is that you no longer get the improvements and fixes of new EasyAdmin versions, so consider writing your changes in the ## EasyAdmin conventions section instead.

Version Control

Commit the installed files to your repository. Your teammates then get the same skill without running any command and their agents behave like yours. This is also what makes the --check option useful in continuous integration.

Depending on the agents that you selected, these are the files to commit:

• .claude/skills/easyadmin/ and CLAUDE.md;
• .agents/skills/easyadmin/ and AGENTS.md;
• .junie/skills/easyadmin/;
• .windsurf/skills/easyadmin/.