typing-inspection

typing-inspection provides a clean API for examining type hints at runtime, filling gaps in the standard library's typing module. The package shines when working with complex generic types, unions, and the newer Python 3.10+ union syntax (X | Y). Functions like `get_origin()`, `get_args()`, and `is_generic_type()` work consistently across Python versions, which saves considerable headache when maintaining compatibility.

The API is intuitive and well-named - if you understand typing basics, you can guess most function names correctly. Type stubs are included, so IDE autocomplete works perfectly. Error messages are clear when you pass invalid arguments, though some edge cases with deeply nested generics can produce cryptic outputs that require debugging.

Documentation is functional but sparse - the README covers main use cases, but lacks a comprehensive API reference or cookbook for advanced scenarios. You'll occasionally need to read the source code to understand behavior with exotic type constructs. That said, for everyday tasks like validating function signatures or building type-aware decorators, it's reliable and saves you from reinventing wheels.

typing-inspection provides helpful utilities for runtime inspection of Python type hints, particularly when building validation frameworks or reflection-heavy code. The API is straightforward for common cases like checking if a type is Optional, extracting generic arguments, or normalizing typing constructs across Python versions. However, the introspection patterns can be fragile when dealing with complex nested generics or user-defined generic classes.

From a security perspective, this library processes arbitrary type objects at runtime, which can be risky when types come from untrusted sources. There's minimal input validation, and error messages can leak internal type structure details. The library doesn't follow secure-by-default principles - you need to add your own validation layers when processing externally-influenced type annotations. Additionally, the last release date of 2025-10-01 appears to be future-dated (likely an error), which raises concerns about maintenance and the actual release cadence.

The dependency footprint is minimal, which reduces supply chain risk, but the lack of active CVE monitoring or security documentation is concerning for security-critical applications.

typing-inspection provides runtime utilities for introspecting Python type hints, offering cleaner APIs than digging through __annotations__ directly. In practice, it handles generic types, union inspection, and origin checking reasonably well. However, the library hasn't seen active development recently and its error handling can be opaque when encountering malformed or complex type definitions.

From a security perspective, I've had concerns using this in validation pipelines. The library doesn't sanitize or validate type objects before introspection, which can be problematic if you're accepting type hints from untrusted sources (dynamic type construction, pickle deserialization scenarios). Error messages sometimes leak internal type structure details that could aid attackers mapping your application's internals. There's no clear secure-by-default design philosophy evident.

The dependency chain is minimal which reduces supply chain risk, but the lack of recent updates means newer typing features (Python 3.10+ union syntax, variadic generics) may not be fully supported. For production validation systems, I'd recommend typing_inspect or get_type_hints from typing module directly for better maintenance guarantees.