PhpCodeArcheology
PhpCodeArcheology is a PHP static analysis tool that measures code quality through 60+ metrics including cyclomatic complexity, maintainability index, coupling, and cohesion. It generates comprehensive reports for files, classes, methods, and functions — detecting code smells, identifying hotspots via git churn analysis, and tracking quality trends over time.
Unlike PHPStan or Psalm (which focus on type safety and bug detection), PhpCodeArcheology focuses on architecture and maintainability — giving you the insights you need to understand and improve your codebase structure. Think of it as an alternative to PHPMetrics with deeper git integration, baseline management, and AI-ready output.
Features
- 60+ code quality metrics per file, class, and function — cyclomatic complexity, cognitive complexity, maintainability index, LCOM, Halstead metrics, coupling, instability, and more
- Problem detection with 14 built-in rules — God Class, too complex, dead code, security smells, SOLID violations, deep inheritance, low type coverage, untested complex code
- Test analysis — auto-detects PHPUnit/Pest/Codeception, maps test files to production classes, integrates Clover XML for line-level coverage, highlights untested hotspots
- Git integration — churn analysis, hotspot detection (high churn + high complexity), author tracking
- Source code display — view method source code directly in the HTML report with PHP syntax highlighting and a nesting-depth heatmap that reveals complexity hotspots at a glance (details below)
- Multiple report formats — interactive HTML, Markdown, JSON, SARIF (GitHub Code Scanning), AI summary, Knowledge Graph (JSON)
- Health Score — single 0-100 score with A-F grading for your entire project
- Technical Debt Score — weighted problem score normalised per 100 logical lines of code
- History tracking — trend charts across multiple analysis runs
- Baseline management — track only new problems, ignore existing ones (ideal for legacy projects)
- CI/CD ready — configurable exit codes, SARIF for GitHub Code Scanning, JSON for custom tooling
- Quick mode — fast terminal-only output without report generation
- CLAUDE.md generation — auto-generated project overview for AI coding assistants
- AI integration — native MCP server for AI assistants like Claude Code (details below)
