Reverse Engineer Anything (REA): Can AI Really Crack Closed Code?

Every developer hits this wall eventually. A feature behaves in a way you can’t explain, and the code behind it is locked away. No source. No docs. Just a compiled binary or a wall of minified JavaScript. Figuring it out the traditional way means hours in a disassembler, specialist tools like Ghidra or IDA, and a skill set most developers never had time to learn. So most people guess, work around it, or give up. REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) is built to remove that wall. It’s an open-source MCP server that lets AI coding agents investigate native binaries, Electron apps, Android APKs, .NET assemblies, websites and firmware, all from plain-language instructions. You ask how something works. The agent digs in and shows you the evidence. But can you trust what it tells you? To find out, we predicted how Obsidian’s quick-switcher ranks search results before letting the agent inspect a single line. In this article, we explore REA’s setup, real-world accuracy, blind spots, and the time and token cost of reverse engineering with AI. REA is an MCP server that connects to your coding agent and exposes about twenty categories of analysis target. The framing most coverage gets wrong is…