Using Static Analysis Engineering

Overview

A static analyzer is an engine: AST → abstract domain → fixed-point inference → verdict. Treat it as one, or your "linter" calcifies into a pile of regexes that nobody trusts.

This pack treats building an analyzer as a discipline distinct from running one. A real analyzer has a chosen visitation strategy (visitor, walker, transformer), an abstract domain it computes over (a lattice with defined join semantics, monotonicity, and finite height), a phased inference pipeline that terminates because the lattice does, an extension surface that allows new rules without forking the engine, and an honest economics for false positives — because the rate at which suppressions accumulate determines whether the analyzer is load-bearing or ceremonial five years from now.

This is the producer-side counterpart to architecture analysis:

• axiom-system-archaeologist consumes analyzers — runs existing tools, ingests their findings, and synthesises a system map. The analyzer is an oracle; the archaeologist is its reader.
• axiom-static-analysis-engineering (this pack) builds analyzers — designs the AST visitor, the abstract domain, the inference order, the rule plugin model, and the suppression discipline. The analyzer is the artifact; the engineer is its author.
• The two pair: an archaeologist that finds a gap in coverage hands the gap to this pack; this pack ships the new rule; the archaeologist re-runs and the gap closes. Cross-link, don't duplicate.

There is a third member of this family, split by what the tool produces rather than by what it reads:

• axiom-tensor-compiler-engineering transforms IR and produces executables. This pack reads a program and emits a verdict about it; that pack rewrites a program and emits something that runs. The disciplines rhyme — both need a defined IR, both need an extension model, both live or die on trust in their output — but the trust mechanism differs: an analyzer earns trust through false-positive economics, a compiler earns it through a conformance gate that is independent of the compiler. If your tool changes the program rather than judging it → /tensor-compiler-engineering.
• The three pair naturally: a structural verifier that says "this graph is legal and canonical" is a verdict producer (this pack); the artifact it approves is compiled and conformance-checked there.