Marrow

A modular, HMVC-first PHP framework — explicit dependencies over global resolution, service injection over magic.

Documentation · Getting started · Changelog

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What Marrow is

Marrow is a PHP 8.2+ framework for building modular, testable, HMVC applications. Instead of a single app/ folder and a global service locator, an application is a set of self-contained modules — each with its own routes, views, migrations, and an explicit imports/exports contract enforced by the container at boot time.

#[Module(
    name: 'blog',
    imports: [AuthModule::class],
    providers: [PostService::class],
    exports: [PostService::class],
)]
class BlogModule extends BaseModule {}

A module doesn't even have to live in the app — BaseModule::path() resolves its views, routes, and migrations by reflecting on the module class's own file location, which means a module ships just as well from vendor/ as a plain Composer package. That one mechanism is what turns the framework into an ecosystem: install a package, and its module registers itself.

Core building blocks: IoC container with reflection-based resolution, HTTP + console kernels, a fluent router (groups, named routes, #[Route] attributes), a model-oriented ORM (relationships, migrations, soft deletes, eager loading), auth & a typed security middleware pipeline, Twig, events/jobs/queues/scheduling, and pluggable /health checks.

Get started

composer create-project marrow/skeleton my-app
cd my-app
cp .env.example .env && php forge key:generate
php forge migrate --seed
php forge serve --watch-css

Repositories

Repository	What it is
core	The framework itself — container, modules, router, ORM, auth, CLI (forge). Distributed as marrow/framework.
skeleton	The starter application project — composer create-project marrow/skeleton and you have a running app.
form-builder	Django-style declarative forms: define fields as attributes on the backend, validate with Marrow's own rule engine, render semantic HTML — no fluent HTML builder, no duplicated frontend rules.
anvil	Local Docker Compose dev environment — Laravel Sail's role, under Marrow's own name. php forge anvil:install --services=mysql,redis,node.
compass	Generates AGENTS.md — a live map of an app's modules, routes, and config, plus Marrow-specific gotchas, for AI coding agents and new contributors.

Every companion package is an independent, self-documented Composer package (own README/LICENSE) that registers itself automatically on composer require via package auto-discovery — no manual step in config/modules.php.

composer require marrow/form-builder
composer require --dev marrow/anvil marrow/compass

Design principles

• Explicit over implicit. Module dependencies are declared (imports/exports) and validated at boot — missing dependencies and dependency cycles fail loudly, not silently.
• Injection over global state. Services are resolved through the container and constructor-injected; no facades, no service locator reached for from anywhere.
• Convention where it helps, none where it doesn't. There's deliberately no app/ directory in the skeleton — a domain concern like authentication lives in its own Account module, not a generic bucket.
• Package ecosystem as a first-class idea, not an afterthought. The same reflection-based path resolution that lets a local module find its own views is what lets a vendor/-installed package register a full module — forms, dev tooling, and AI-agent context are all shipped this way rather than bolted onto the core.

Contributing

Each repository documents its own contribution workflow. In general: PHP 8.2+, strict typing, PSR-12, tests for functional changes (composer test), static analysis (composer analyse), and a clear PR description. See core's CONTRIBUTING.md for the full guide.

License

All Marrow repositories are MIT licensed.