PHPStan is distributed as a phar file. Claude's normal file tools (Read, Grep, Glob) cannot access phar contents. Use the methods below to explore PHPStan's internal APIs when developing rules and type extensions.

Phar Location

File: vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar
Phar path prefix: phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/

Method 1 — JetBrains MCP (preferred)

Use the JetBrains MCP get_symbol_info tool to look up PHPStan classes and interfaces. It resolves symbols via PhpStorm's index and returns declarations and documentation.

Find a use statement referencing the PHPStan class in any src/ file, then call get_symbol_info with the fully qualified class name.

Method 2 — PHP CLI (fallback)

When JetBrains MCP is unavailable or you need to browse directories, use PHP CLI commands via Bash.

Read a file

php -r "echo file_get_contents('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension.php');"

List a directory

php -r "print_r(scandir('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/'));"

Search within a file

php -r "echo file_get_contents('phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension.php');" | grep -n 'getTypeFromMethodCall'

Search across multiple files

php -r "\$dir = 'phar:///Users/mglaman/Projects/php/phpstan-drupal/vendor/phpstan/phpstan/phpstan.phar/src/Type/'; foreach (scandir(\$dir) as \$f) { if (substr(\$f, -4) === '.php') { \$c = file_get_contents(\$dir . \$f); if (strpos(\$c, 'SearchTerm') !== false) echo \$f . PHP_EOL; }}"

Key Directories Inside the Phar

Directory	Contents
`src/Analyser/`	Scope, NodeScopeResolver, analysis engine
`src/Type/`	Type system, type extensions interfaces
`src/Rules/`	Built-in rules, Rule interface
`src/Reflection/`	ReflectionProvider, class/method/property reflection
`src/PhpDoc/`	PHPDoc parsing, type resolving
`src/DependencyInjection/`	Container, extension loading
`src/Testing/`	RuleTestCase, TypeInferenceTestCase base classes
`src/Node/`	Virtual nodes (InClassNode, InClassMethodNode, etc.)

Commonly Extended Interfaces

These are the PHPStan interfaces and classes that phpstan-drupal most frequently extends:

PHPStan\Rules\Rule — Custom analysis rules
PHPStan\Type\DynamicMethodReturnTypeExtension — Dynamic return types for method calls
PHPStan\Type\DynamicStaticMethodReturnTypeExtension — Dynamic return types for static method calls
PHPStan\Type\DynamicFunctionReturnTypeExtension — Dynamic return types for function calls
PHPStan\Analyser\Scope — Analysis scope (variable types, context)
PHPStan\Reflection\ReflectionProvider — Look up class/function reflections
PHPStan\Reflection\MethodReflection — Method reflection data
PHPStan\Type\Type — Base type interface
PHPStan\Type\ObjectType — Represents a class instance type
PHPStan\Testing\RuleTestCase — Base class for rule tests

name	phpstan-internals
description	Navigate and read PHPStan's internal source code from the phar file
user-invocable	false