Is there a way for a CFC function to know how its been called? Whether its being called from remote, local or another component function.

I don't know if there's an efficient way but one option is something like this:

try {
  throw "";
} catch ( any e ) {
  // walk e.tagContext to see what's in the call tree
}

the methods in question were made for remote access(frontend post requests with complex objects sent in the body), and I'm now seeing an opportunity to also use those same methods but calling them from other components server-side ofcourse. however, in order to read the complex json objects I need to deserializeJson(). So I was thinking if I'm calling my method via another component method then I don't have to deserialzieJson().

I would generally recommend the remote methods be their own specific CFC and do all the marshaling and validation they need, then call the actual underlying CFCs/methods with that cleaned up data. That separates the business logic from the "controller" aspect of remote calling parameters and return data formatting, and makes your business logic more reusable.

Yeah too easy to forget that "MVC"-type considerations still apply in these cases too. The

remote

method should just be the controller bit.

There’s a bif called : callstackGet