Summary
This video tests Reverse Engineer Anything (REA), a viral GitHub project that packages decompilation tools as an MCP server so AI coding agents can study an existing application and rebuild its features. The presenter explains how it works: an agent sends requests to the MCP, which connects to established reverse engineering tools such as Ghidra, Hopper, and IDA, and returns pseudo code, evidence, and open unknowns that the agent iterates on.
In a hands-on test, the presenter asks Claude to rebuild the macOS Preview photo viewer, running one attempt with REA and another using Opus without the library, working inside the Orca terminal manager. The REA-assisted version ends up closely matching the original, including zoom, rotation, sharing, and fast drawing annotations, while the no-library version finished first but felt laggy.
The video also pushes back on the hype. The underlying tools have existed for years, with Ghidra released by the NSA in 2019, and REA mainly gives agents a simple interface to them. The presenter argues that the surge in GitHub stars and social media buzz, including comments from Matthew Berman and the Replit CEO, may be running ahead of the quality of real demos, and discusses what this means for software more broadly.
📺 Source: Nick Saraev · Published October 10, 2026
🏷️ Format: Review
