Live Support Chat

• Requirements
• Install
• Behaviour
• Telegram bot
• Config

Filament-backed live support chat for Laravel. Visitors talk through a storefront widget; agents reply in the Filament panel.

This is not a generic headless chat SDK. Without Filament nobody can answer.

#Requirements

• PHP 8.2+
• Laravel 11, 12, or 13
• Filament 4 or 5

#Install

composer require miran/mks-support-chat
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=support-chat-migrations
php artisan migrate

Register the plugin on your Filament panel:

use Miran\SupportChat\Filament\SupportChatPlugin;

public function panel(Panel $panel): Panel
{
    return $panel
        ->plugin(SupportChatPlugin::make());
}

Do not enable Filament databaseNotifications() unless Laravel's notifications table exists. If you want the panel bell for new visitor messages:

php artisan notifications:table
php artisan migrate

Then on the panel:

$panel
    ->plugin(SupportChatPlugin::make())
    ->databaseNotifications()
    ->databaseNotificationsPolling('15s');

Drop the widget on the public layout:

<x-support-chat::widget />

Optional publishes:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=support-chat-migrations
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=support-chat-config
php artisan vendor:publish --tag=support-chat-views

Widget CSS/JS are served from the package (/support-chat/assets/...). Publishing assets is not required.

#Behaviour

• Visitor identity is a httpOnly cookie (sc_chat_token). Restoring a thread never uses email+phone.
• Starting a chat with a valid cookie updates that conversation. Without a cookie, a new conversation is created — even if the email already exists.
• Agent replies store agent_user_id.
• The Filament nav badge is unread visitor messages, not “every open chat”.
• The admin screen is a split inbox (list + thread on one page), not a table that opens a second page.
• One tick = stored. Two ticks = the other party has read. There is no separate “delivered” state; this package polls.

#Telegram bot

Outbound alerts only. When a visitor sends a message, the bot posts a short preview (name + snippet + inbox link) to Telegram. Agent replies are not forwarded. There is no Telegram webhook and you cannot answer the chat from Telegram.

Configure it from the inbox: gear icon on the conversation list → bot token from @BotFather, chat ID, enable alerts, then Send test. The token is stored encrypted in support_chat_settings. Several agents should share one Telegram group (negative chat ID). Multiple chat IDs can be comma-separated.

To lock settings in the environment instead of the panel (env wins; the form becomes read-only):

SUPPORT_CHAT_TELEGRAM_ENABLED=true
SUPPORT_CHAT_TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN=123456:ABC…
SUPPORT_CHAT_TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID=-1001234567890

Alerts run on MessageCreated. With QUEUE_CONNECTION=sync they send in the same request as the visitor message. Use a real queue in production so a slow Telegram API cannot stall the widget.

#Config

See config/support-chat.php after publishing. widget.quick_replies is an empty list by default.

After upgrading, publish new migrations again and migrate:

php artisan vendor:publish --tag=support-chat-migrations
php artisan migrate

The Telegram settings table and visitor read-cursor live in that second migration. Without it, the inbox gear cannot save and read receipts for agent messages will not advance.