A rather user friendly proof of the concept with `ast` module is ready. http://pypi.python.org/pypi/astdump/ `astdump` contains get_top_vars() method, which extracts sufficient information from module's AST to generate setup.py for itself. This capability can already be reused for plugin version discovery mechanisms. ISTM the working library should motivate authors better than a PEP convention. =) `astdump` doesn't provide complete module introspection capabilities. I've primarily focused on getting the output done, so for a proper API it would be nice to study use case examples first. `astdump` contains tree walker with filtering capabilities by node type and level. What "python-object" should expose and how to make this convenient is not completely clear for me. -- anatoly t.