PHP has two types of frameworks in 2026:
Slim, Flight. Great for 3 files. Painful at 30 files.
Laravel, Symfony. Great at 30 files. Slow and magical at 3 files.
Strata is the missing middle. We took the layers every PHP app eventually needs — routing, DI, HTTP, config, CLI — and implemented them with zero magic and zero lock-in.
No method name conventions. No “if a class exists in this folder it’s auto-registered”. You wire it, you see it, you control it.
You won’t extend BaseController. You’ll typehint services. Middleware over base classes. Traits over abstract monsters.
If a PSR exists, we use it. PSR-7, 11, 15, 3, 14. Your knowledge and packages are portable. Leave Strata anytime. Keep your code.
No bootstrap caches to warm. No service providers to defer. Cold start <5ms on PHP 8.3 JIT. Your uptime is measured in months, not requests.
No new query language. No template DSL. No custom container format. If it’s in the PHP manual, it’s fair game. If it’s not, we probably didn’t add it.