Building Filament Plugins at Scale: Lessons from 400+ Stars
Insights and patterns I have learned from building and maintaining popular open-source plugins for the Filament PHP ecosystem, from initial concept to community adoption.
The Journey
When I first started building plugins for Filament PHP, I had a simple goal: solve problems I was encountering repeatedly in my own projects. What I did not expect was the response from the community.
Over the past few years, plugins like Filament Advanced Filter, Filament Copy Actions, and Filament Maps have collectively earned over 400 GitHub stars and are used by thousands of developers worldwide. Here is what I have learned along the way.
Design for the Ecosystem
The most important lesson was understanding that a plugin is not a standalone product — it is a citizen of a larger ecosystem. Every API decision, every configuration option, every default behavior needs to feel native to Filament.
1use Webbingbrasil\FilamentAdvancedFilter\Filters\TextFilter;23// This feels natural to any Filament developer4TextFilter::make('name')5 ->label('Customer Name')6 ->default('contains');Embrace Convention Over Configuration
The most successful plugins require minimal setup. Users should be able to install and use them immediately, with sensible defaults that cover 80% of use cases.
Keep Backwards Compatibility
Breaking changes are expensive for everyone. I use semantic versioning strictly and provide migration guides for any major version bumps.
Invest in Documentation
Good documentation is not optional for open-source projects. I spend roughly the same amount of time writing docs as I do writing code. Every filter type, every configuration option, every edge case gets documented.
Listen to the Community
GitHub Issues are a gold mine. Some of the best features in my plugins came from community feature requests. The key is balancing what users want with what maintains a clean, coherent API.
What is Next
I am currently working on Filament v3 compatibility for all plugins, exploring new integration points, and planning a comprehensive testing toolkit for plugin developers. The Filament ecosystem is growing fast, and I want to keep contributing to that growth.