“AI can clone any app without source code”? A reality check on REA
TL;DR
REA (Reverse Engineer Anything, morluto/rea) is a platform AI coding agents call via CLI or MCP to analyse software behaviour — native binaries, Android APKs, Electron apps, WASM, firmware, packet captures and more. It helps understand and reimplement narrow behaviours; it isn’t a “clone AutoCAD” button.
What it can do
- Agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor…) call REA to gather evidence about how a program behaves.
- Showcased examples: Calculator’s percentage rules and the Chrome dinosaur game’s speed-up logic — then rebuilding small versions.
- Findings separate what was observed, what was inferred and what remains unknown.
Hype vs reality
| Clickbait claim | Reality |
|---|---|
| Clone an entire large application | Understand and reproduce specific, narrow behaviours |
| Skip buying licences | No — copying commercial software breaches its terms and IP law |
| Install and go | Needs an isolated environment, know-how and verification |
Using it responsibly
- Legitimate uses: understanding undocumented legacy systems, compatibility work, security analysis of software you own or are authorised to test.
- Legal: read the EULA and local law before reverse engineering someone else’s software.
- Safety: install only from the official repo, analyse untrusted binaries in a VM/sandbox, and restrict the agent’s network and file access.
- Verify: treat findings as hypotheses until tested against the real software.
Further reading: GIGAZINE on REA