Sheaf-Cohomological Program Analysis: Unifying Bug Finding, Equivalence, and Verification via \v{C}ech Cohomology

TL;DR

This paper introduces a cohomological framework for program analysis that unifies bug detection, type checking, and verification, demonstrating its effectiveness with a Python analysis tool outperforming existing solutions.

Contribution

It formulates program analysis as computing Čech cohomology of a semantic presheaf, providing new methods for bug fixing, equivalence, and compositional analysis.

Findings

100% bug-detection recall on benchmarks

99% accuracy in behavioral equivalence detection

98% correctness in specification satisfaction

Abstract

We present a framework in which program analysis -- type checking, bug finding, and equivalence verification -- is organized as computing the \v{C}ech cohomology of a semantic presheaf over a program's site category. The presheaf assigns refinement-type information to observation sites and restricts it along data-flow morphisms. The cohomology group $H^{0}$ is the space of globally consistent typings. The first cohomology group $H^{1}$ classifies gluing obstructions -- bugs, type errors, and equivalence failures -- each localized to a specific pair of disagreeing sites. This formulation yields three concrete results unavailable in prior work: (1) the rank of $H^1$ over $F_{2}$ counts the minimum independent fixes; (2) $H_{1}(U, Iso) = 0$ is sound and complete for behavioral equivalence; (3) Mayer-Vietoris enables compositional, incremental obstruction counting. We implement the framework in Deppy, a Python analysis tool, and evaluate it on a suite of 375~benchmarks: 133~bug-detection programs, 134~equivalence pairs, and 108~specification-satisfaction checks. Deppy achieves {100% bug-detection recall} (69% precision, F1 = 81%), 99% equivalence accuracy with zero false equivalences, and 98% spec accuracy with zero false satisfactions -- outperforming mypy and pyright, which report zero findings on unannotated code. The analysis models Python semantics as algebraic geometry: variables live on the generic fiber (non-None) unless on the closed nullable subscheme, integers form Spec($\mathbb{Z}$) with no bounded section (no overflow), and short-circuit evaluation defines an open-set topology on the presheaf.