REA in action

AI reverse engineering22,475 likes

Control an air conditioner from the Mac menu bar

Ilter Canberk used Codex to inspect an air conditioner app’s network calls in an Android emulator and built a Mac menu-bar control. He later used Codex and Lens Studio to bring the same controls to AR glasses.

Author’s reply ↗Follow-up post ↗

AI reverse engineering14,340 likes

Universal Modder: mods across existing games

Rehan Sheikh demonstrates an agent analyzing game files, generating mods, and testing them in the running game. Examples include a new civilization in Age of Empires II and Minecraft characters in GTA V.

REA in practice9,800 likes

A purchased Steam game, opened in Unity

A.I.Warper says a first session with REA decompiled a Steam game he had already bought and opened it in Unity in under 30 minutes, using Opus 5.5. The post names neither the game nor a repository, and there is no clip.

AI reverse engineering7,833 likes

Firefighter: an old DOS game, rewritten in Rust

Eric S. Raymond wanted the DOS game Firefighter in a maintainable form for an old-game collection.

AI reverse engineering7,268 likes

A faster Plex client for one LG TV

Ghidra and Claude Code were used to study that TV’s media stack, then a Rust and OpenGL client called PlxNative was built. The author says the menu on that set dropped from about 30 seconds to about 3, with 4K playback.

Developer write-up ↗

AI reverse engineering6,385 likes

Modern Warfare 2, checked against the original bytes

Maurice Heumann describes about three months of work on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, with many agents plus IDA. His recap says the game runs and that 83% of functions match the original bytes. He also says the source will not be published.

Follow-up post ↗

Community projects5,419 likes

An Apple TV remote, driving Linux

Alex Funk wanted a first-generation Siri Remote to talk to a Linux machine instead of only an Apple TV. He published open-appleremote and a clip of touch, buttons, gestures and the microphone.

Project page ↗

AI reverse engineering4,937 likes

Blue Star, controlled from the menu bar

MC reverse engineered the Blue Star air conditioner app, built an MCP server, and connected it to a Mac menu-bar app. His earlier post shows how the server lets Claude or ChatGPT set the temperature.

Earlier post ↗

Community projects2,263 likes

Claude’s Chrome control, pointed at a remote browser

Paul Klein wanted Claude Code to drive a browser that was not on the same machine. The thread shows the local Chrome connection being translated into commands for a Browserbase cloud browser, with a demo and a public plugin.

Project page ↗

AI reverse engineering2,285 likes

Tuya lights, controlled from a Mac

Lucho did not want the Tuya phone app to be the only way to run RGB bulbs he owned. He reports that Claude read the Bluetooth traffic from the phone, and a Mac script then sent the commands. The post includes the lights actually changing.

REA in practice686 likes

Claude Slides: an editor rebuilt from the page bundle

Baoyu downloaded the scripts and styles behind Claude’s slide editor, used Codex with REA to analyze the obfuscated code, and had Claude Code organize the project. He shared an editor demo and a code commit in JimLiu/baocut.

Code commit ↗

REA in practice576 likes

Claude Code: reading a 47 MB compressed package

The recording shows Muse installing REA and working through a compressed Claude Code package described as about 47 MB. A later post says the same kind of inspection was used on the language setting.

Follow-up post ↗

REA in practice

A menu-bar control for a smart-toilet lid

The author wanted the lid controlled from a computer instead of a WeChat mini program. The posts say REA plus Codex read the Bluetooth traffic and produced a Mac menu-bar control. A follow-up says the same menu bar later covered other devices already in that home.

Follow-up post ↗

REA in practice

macOS Preview: once with REA, once without

The same Preview rebuild was run twice: Claude with REA, and Claude alone. The author says the REA version came closer on zoom, sharing, rotation, annotation and saving, and felt faster at drawing, while the plain Claude pass was faster to finish.

REA in practice252 likes

Open Codex annotations from a web page

Baoyu wanted a page inside the Codex desktop browser to hand a comment to the conversation. Codex with REA read the Electron code while he clicked through the app. The reported call opens the comment box and pre-fills it. It does not place the comment into the composer or send the message. The call named in the post is document.oai.annotation.request().

AI reverse engineering978 likes

Apple Notes, imported into another notes app

Ozgur Ozer wanted a path from Apple Notes into his notes app, Grape. The clip shows folders, notes and images coming across after Claude Code inspected Notes.

AI reverse engineering678 likes

Boba Fett, dropped into Red Dead Redemption 2

Chris shows Boba Fett moving inside Red Dead Redemption 2. The post says Claude helped read the asset format, export a Battlefront II model, and fit it to Arthur’s rig, with a jetpack, weapons and voice.

AI reverse engineering479 likes

Urban Terror, running in the browser

levelsio had been trying to put Urban Terror in the browser through ioquake3 and WebAssembly. The new post says the blocker was a layout mismatch between engine structures and the game bytecode. After that fix, the author reports the game joining a multiplayer server.

AI reverse engineering272 likes

GarageBand’s project format, used to score a video

Anshu was making a music video and wanted the instruments already on the Mac. He says Claude read the GarageBand project format as one step in a larger pipeline that also used Blender and local voice models.

Community projects254 likes

Claude Design, wired into BaoCut

Baoyu added a Claude Design skill to BaoCut, his video agent, and published the commit. He says a standalone skill could not edit, revise and mark, so the integration lives inside the product.

Code commit ↗

REA in practice355 likes

An unnamed binary library

Leo Xiang reports using REA on an encrypted binary library, then asking Claude Code to reimplement it. He says private evaluation numbers landed close to the original. The library, source and test method are not public.

REA in practice

Port Virtual Desktop Streamer to Linux

The project keeps the vendor’s macOS protocol libraries and replaces the platform layer with Linux audio, video and input calls. The README says Claude Code and REA built that port from one prompt, plus a later prompt for fixes. It also says the repository does not contain Virtual Desktop code: the build extracts libraries from an installer the user downloads. SteamVR and OpenXR games stay with the Windows streamer.

Original post ↗

REA in practice

Fix analysis of Obsidian’s large application archive

GitHub issue 746 says rea analyze-javascript-application sat quiet, then failed, on obsidian.asar from Obsidian 1.12.7. After the fix, maintainers and the reporter posted completed runs, from 86 to 186 seconds depending on the machine.

REA in practice

Trace MarkText’s HTML export

The author says agents used REA to follow HTML export inside a built MarkText app, and that 17 tests passed. One Windows check is described as still open.

REA in practice

Axure .rp files, opened for an agent

LilZee’s zee-rp project says REA helped read the Axure .rp format. The repository publishes a JavaScript engine and MCP tools so an agent can edit a prototype.

Original post ↗

REA in practice678 likes

CapCut, edited from the chat

gkxspace says Claude and Codex, with REA, can change an open CapCut project from the chat: the player refreshes, and CapCut’s own undo and save still work. There is no public repository.

REA in practice

A video editor sketched from CapCut

Mehal Kumar reports using REA with Claude Code to study CapCut, then generating an editor with captions, transitions, animation and text. He says the first pass took about 30 minutes and that more features are still missing.

REA in practice

Cameo: a desktop character, rebuilt from the app

Cameo is a macOS menu-bar app that puts a small animated character on the desktop. The author describes installing REA, taking pseudocode from the compiled app, and asking Claude Code to rebuild the behavior.

Project page ↗

REA in practice

Recreate a notes app’s CSV export

Curtis Pyke’s Kingy AI test followed an export from the renderer to the main-process handler and wrote a separate CSV formatter. The article says all 14 declared tests matched, including a title that contains quotation marks. The boundary is explicit: source analysis and a controlled Node run only.

REA in practice

A 20-line Electron notes app on Windows

Kore D wrote the sample before pointing REA at anything larger: a main process, a preload script, and a store that writes JSON. The article says analyze-javascript-application returned 27 nodes, named notes:search and notes:save, and gave line ranges in the preload file. It parsed three JavaScript files and did not run them.

REA in practice

Small binaries, where REA added little

GitTested reviewed rea-agents 6.2.0 with Claude Code. On the native checklist, REA used more tokens and did not win the score. Electron sessions tied, because the agent searched the unpacked app. A full analysis of one 22 MB archive wrote a document too large for one MCP call.

REA in practice

Stretchly: eight windows, counted in 14 seconds

A Medium review uses Stretchly, an open-source Electron break app, as a readable target. The visible introduction says a 10 October run finished in 14 seconds: 8 windows, 30 main-process handlers, 31 messages and 9 page-side listeners, all matching a hand check. The full article is member-only.

Official examples

Aegis: the 30-second login code

The official showcase follows the login-code path in an Aegis APK and reports 133 agreeing inputs across three implementations. Our page is a teaching demo with public test vectors.

Evidence note ↗

Official examples

DX-Ball: one stereo-pan function

The upstream case recovers one sound-pan function, reports 3,205 original x86 checks, and says the recompiled function matches all 63 bytes. Our tone demo illustrates direction.

Evidence note ↗

Official examples

TH04: how a ring of bullets is aimed

The REA project explains angle spacing, aim and rotation for one bullet ring in Touhou’s Lotus Land Story. The instruction checks cite an existing reconstruction project. Our diagram approximates pointer aiming.

Evidence note ↗

Official examples

Notion: three clipboard paths

The official investigation follows copy actions from the renderer through preload and IPC. A later pass names copy, copyText and copyImage as static candidates. Our guide teaches that path.

Pull request ↗

Official examples

Dinosaur speed, and the calculator percent key

One investigation checks how a Chromium-derived dinosaur page accelerates. Another reads Windows Calculator’s model library and separates the percent rule for addition from the rule for multiplication. Our labs cover those two rules.

Official showcase ↗

REA in practice

Identify a Flutter APK’s runtime and build

Pull request 1582 parses an APK and reports the Dart snapshot hash plus per-ABI library digests. That identifies which runtime is present. It does not recover a Dart project.

REA in practice

ApiDemos: from an APK to one Java method

Pull request 738 uses the real ApiDemos APK to list classes, choose an overload and trace callers through JADX. The write-up says the APK was not executed.

REA in practice

A HarmonyOS package inventory

Pull request 1447 checks a published HAP and compares CLI and MCP inventories of components, hashes and runtime clues. The case notes say Ark bytecode was not decoded.

REA in practice

PSP programs: teach Ghidra the processor

Issue 1330 asks for Allegrex support. Pull request 1599 connects a Ghidra extension and checks known functions on a PSP program the contributor compiled.

Pull request ↗

REA in practice

Fix architecture detection for MIPS32 firmware

Issue 1620 says automatic analysis chose a 64-bit processor for MIPS32 firmware and missed functions. Pull request 1898 sets the 32-bit language and compares four real firmware ELFs with a separate Ghidra export.

Pull request ↗

REA in practice

Extract firmware files and pass them to Ghidra

Pull request 741 walks gzip, USTAR and ext4 images the contributor generated, checks extracted hashes, and hands one ELF to Ghidra.

REA in practice

CTF: recover a program’s input validation rules

REA’s evidence file for a DownUnderCTF challenge says a recovered input was accepted by the original program and rejected after one character changed.

REA in practice

Touhou rebuilds: a method, plus separate projects

REA’s method note describes recovering old Touhou executables into C++ and checking compiled output. Playable Linux, browser or Windows builds belong to the linked reconstruction projects. Our TH04 page is only the bullet-ring diagram.

Project page ↗