Tools, memory, security, and a ReAct loop, already built. Zero framework dependencies in core. Any LLM provider.

One env var, one builder, one send(). The builder checks ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, then OPENAI_API_KEY, GROQ_API_KEY, GEMINI_API_KEY, MISTRAL_API_KEY, DEEPSEEK_API_KEY, OLLAMA_HOST, in that order, and uses whichever it finds first. No YAML, no agent framework to learn, no vendor lock-in.

The agent decides which tools to call and in what order, running a ReAct loop (reason, act, observe, repeat) until it has an answer or hits the iteration cap. This works identically whether the tools touch your shell, your database, your HTTP APIs, or your codebase.

Every "AI in PHP" tutorial ends the same way: an HTTP client bolted onto a provider API, a hand-rolled tool-call loop, and a prayer that the prompt holds up in production. A generic LLM SDK gives you the API client. phpClaw gives you the agent runtime around it: the loop, the guards, the memory, the framework wiring, already assembled.