Does src/kiss/core/ depend on anything outside itself?

Why two methods, not one

A plain grep for import is not enough here, for two reasons. First, this codebase puts a lot of imports inside function bodies — 17 of them — either to break circular references or to avoid paying the cost of loading a heavy LLM SDK at startup. A naive scan of the top of each file would miss all of them. Second, Python can import by string at runtime through importlib.import_module(), which no text search can follow.

So the audit was done twice, from opposite directions.

Method 1 — parse every import node

Each file was parsed into a syntax tree and walked in full, collecting every import x and from x import y node wherever it appeared: module level, inside functions, inside classes, and under if TYPE_CHECKING: guards.

=== KISS imports OUTSIDE kiss.core ===
NONE

Method 2 — watch what actually loads

Each of the 22 modules was imported in a fresh subprocess, and sys.modules was then inspected for any kiss.* entry that did not begin with kiss.core. This catches dynamic imports that method 1 cannot see.

modules checked:                 22
non-core kiss modules loaded:  NONE

The only dynamic import in the package is the lazy __getattr__ in models/__init__.py. It is safe by construction: its _LAZY_IMPORTS table maps names only to kiss.core.models.* targets, so it cannot reach outside even in principle.

Which way the dependencies point

What core does depend on

Beyond the standard library, exactly nine third-party packages — all of them declared in pyproject.toml, so there are no undeclared imports hiding in the package.

The internal graph

Every edge below stays inside the package. kiss_error.py and html_render.py import nothing from the project at all — they are pure leaves.

The two openai_compatible_model files import each other. That cycle is deliberate and is kept from exploding by putting the back-reference inside a function body rather than at module level — the same trick used by base.set_printer() and printer.truncate_result().

Three couplings that are not imports

Import-independence is not the same as total independence. Three places in core reach outside the directory through the file system. None of them touch repository code outside core/, but all three would bite anyone trying to lift the package out on its own.

_kiss_pkg_dir = Path(__file__).parent.parent          # -> src/kiss/
SYSTEM_PROMPT = (_kiss_pkg_dir / "SYSTEM.md").read_text(encoding="utf-8")

_PROJECT_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parents[3]    # -> repo root

Reproducing the audit

Both checks are short enough to paste into a terminal at the repository root.

# Method 1 — every import node, including nested and TYPE_CHECKING ones
python3 - <<'PY'
import ast
from pathlib import Path
root = Path("src/kiss/core")
bad = []
for f in sorted(root.rglob("*.py")):
    tree = ast.parse(f.read_text(encoding="utf-8"))
    for n in ast.walk(tree):
        names = []
        if isinstance(n, ast.Import):
            names = [a.name for a in n.names]
        elif isinstance(n, ast.ImportFrom) and n.module and not n.level:
            names = [n.module]
        for m in names:
            if m.startswith("kiss") and not m.startswith("kiss.core"):
                bad.append((str(f), m))
print("=== KISS imports OUTSIDE kiss.core ===")
print("\n".join(f"{a}: {b}" for a, b in bad) or "NONE")
PY

# Method 2 — import each module in a fresh process, then inspect sys.modules
for m in $(cd src && find kiss/core -name '*.py' \
           | sed 's#/__init__\.py$##; s#\.py$##; s#/#.#g' | sort -u); do
  python3 -c "
import importlib, sys
importlib.import_module('$m')
leaked = [k for k in sys.modules
          if k.startswith('kiss.') and not k.startswith('kiss.core')]
print('$m', leaked or 'clean')
"
done

One suggestion

This clean layering is currently held in place by nothing but habit. A single test that re-runs the syntax-tree scan and asserts the result is empty would freeze the property permanently, and would fail loudly the first time someone writes from kiss.agents… import … inside core. It costs about fifteen lines.