Yep, this is pretty much it, except I want the type system to let me know if "methodThatLogsThings" makes it all the way to the top of the call stack without sa

Yep, this is pretty much it, except I want the type system to let me know if "methodThatLogsThings" makes it all the way to the top of the call stack without satisfying the LOG parameter. C# doesn't do that, but I think a theoretical version of C# could - just stick the implicit dependencies into an attribute on each method. For example, the compiler inserts an attribute like: [ImplicitDependency(LOG)] void methodThatLogsThings() Which would cascade up the call hierarchy until it gets satisfied.