I Built a Security Scanner That Uses Your Python AST — Not an LLM, Not a Cloud Service

📰 Dev.to · Lakshmi Sravya Vedantham

Learn how to build a security scanner using Python's Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) without relying on LLMs or cloud services, and improve your code's security

intermediate Published 5 Mar 2026
Action Steps
  1. Install the Shannon project from GitHub using 'git clone https://github.com/KeygraphHQ/shannon.git' to explore its features
  2. Run the security scanner using 'python shannon.py' to test its functionality
  3. Configure the scanner to suit your specific needs by modifying the 'config.json' file
  4. Test the scanner on your own Python projects to identify potential security vulnerabilities
  5. Compare the results with other security scanning tools to evaluate its effectiveness
Who Needs to Know This

This micro-lesson is suitable for software engineers, DevOps teams, and security professionals who want to enhance their code's security and learn about AST-based security scanning

Key Insight

💡 Using Python's AST for security scanning can be an effective alternative to LLM-based or cloud-based solutions

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🚀 Build a security scanner using Python's AST without LLMs or cloud services! 💻 Improve your code's security with Shannon 🚫

Key Takeaways

Learn how to build a security scanner using Python's Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) without relying on LLMs or cloud services, and improve your code's security

Full Article

Title: I Built a Security Scanner That Uses Your Python AST — Not an LLM, Not a Cloud Service

URL Source: https://dev.to/lakshmisravyavedantham/i-built-a-security-scanner-that-uses-your-python-ast-not-an-llm-not-a-cloud-service-4gak

Published Time: 2026-03-05T21:20:21Z

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Posted on Mar 5

# I Built a Security Scanner That Uses Your Python AST — Not an LLM, Not a Cloud Service

[#security](https://dev.to/t/security)[#python](https://dev.to/t/python)[#opensource](https://dev.to/t/opensource)[#devtools](https://dev.to/t/devtools)

A project called [shannon](https://github.com/KeygraphHQ/shannon) hit GitHub trending this week with a 96% success rate on penetration testi
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