Most side projects die before the first useful screen.
Not because the idea is bad, but because setup gets heavy too early: too many folders, too many decisions, too much ceremony.
I wanted something in the middle. Not raw PHP. Not a full Laravel app either.
So I built Minimo.
Repository: github.com/brunoabpinto/minimo Live preview/docs: minimo.wasmer.app/
What I wanted
- Convention-based routing
- A clean way to render Blade, Vue, or Markdown
- No giant bootstrap process
- Something I can explain in a few minutes
That was the whole goal.
The core idea
Every request goes through one place:
public/index.php -> app/Core/core.php
From there, Minimo tries this order:
- Match a controller method.
- If no controller handles it, run plugins.
- First plugin that returns content wins.
That means I can keep core behavior stable and extend rendering logic without touching routing code.
Routing that stays out of your way
I kept URL-to-controller mapping extremely boring on purpose.
GET /hello->HelloController::index()POST /hello->HelloController::create($request)GET /post/42->PostController::show(42)
No route file required for simple cases. If naming is predictable, shipping is faster.
Pages are just files
If no controller is found, plugins try to resolve a page from views/pages.
- Blade:
views/pages/docs.blade.php - Vue:
views/pages/docs-vue.vue - Markdown:
views/pages/docs-md.md
I like this because content and UI experiments become cheap. Create one file, refresh browser, done.
Why Markdown is built in
I write docs before polishing UI. Markdown lets me move fast and keep writing friction low.
With the Markdown plugin, a route like /building-minimo maps directly to this file:
views/pages/building-minimo.md
No extra wiring, no extra config.
What I would improve next
- Better error pages for missing controller methods
- Plugin-level caching hooks
- A stronger test suite around route resolution
But for now, this is exactly what I wanted: a small framework that makes shipping the default.
If you are building tiny products, that trade-off is usually worth it.
