Bothy

Every site on its own PHP

Bothy is a local PHP development environment for macOS. Run each site on its own PHP version with its own php.ini - an old client site on PHP 7.4 next to a new build on 8.3 - and toggle Xdebug per site. It’s the tool I built for my own client work, because I wanted full control without a pile of config files.

MySQL and MariaDB, side by side

Run several MySQL or MariaDB servers at once on different ports, create and assign databases, take snapshots before a risky change and restore them, and run raw SQL from the app, the CLI or your AI agent.

Trusted HTTPS on .test

Every site gets a .test domain with a trusted certificate. Bothy trusts its own certificate authority once and points macOS at *.test, so https://yoursite.test just works - no browser warnings.

Logs, mail and WordPress

Watch access and PHP logs live and filter for errors, and catch every outgoing email locally with Mailpit. For WordPress, Bothy translates .htaccess rewrites into the site’s config and runs WP-CLI under the right PHP version.

A CLI and MCP server for your AI

Everything the app does is available from the bothy CLI, with --json output on every command. The built-in MCP server exposes forty tools, so Claude, ChatGPT, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed and VS Code can create sites, run SQL, change PHP settings and read logs for you.

Native, and it stays running

Bothy is a native SwiftUI Mac app. On first launch it installs PHP, MySQL, Caddy and dnsmasq through Homebrew, and runs them as launchd services that keep going when you quit the app and restart if they crash.