This doesn’t answer all of your points but in terms of finding out where something is defined you can turn a method into a Proc and then ask it. Eg some_ins

This doesn’t answer all of your points but in terms of finding out where something is defined you can turn a method into a Proc and then ask it. Eg some_instance.method(:foo).source_location There’s a similar method for source definition. Both are useful dealing with over use of meta-programming.