InvestNot yet confirmed elsewhere1 publisher2 min readPublished
REA, a toolkit that points AI coding agents at Ghidra, passed 100,000 GitHub stars in six days
REA, an open-source toolkit linking AI coding agents to Ghidra, went from under 10,000 GitHub stars on Oct. 6 to over 100,000 by Oct. 12. Stars are bookmarks. The evidence for cheaper cloning in Decrypt's account is anecdotal.
The Investor · Invest desk
Key figures: REA gained an average of about 15,000 GitHub stars a day. It collected more than 30,000 stars on October 11 alone, and had fewer than 10,000 stars on October 6.
| Figure | Value | Note | Claim |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average stars gained a day, about | 15,000 stars a day | 12 | |
| Oct. 11 stars, more than | 30,000 stars | 2 | |
| Oct. 6 stars, fewer than | 10,000 stars | 1 |
What happened
- REA hooks coding assistants such as Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex to professional tools like Ghidra through MCP, the protocol Anthropic created for connecting models to outside tools.
- A fan used an open-source AI model and a recompilation toolkit in September to bring Fable 2 to Windows, and the AI had it booting in about an hour before a long stretch of manual fixes.
- Developer Brandon Thomas used Claude Opus 5.5 to build ArtCraft, free Rust apps that mirror Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom and other Adobe programs.
Why it matters
- contradiction Decrypt's headline says the tool is upending software, yet the uses it lists are game mods and ports, and the Adobe look-alike was built without REA.
- constraint Thomas's clean-room label depends on never touching the original code, so a rebuild that read Adobe's binaries through REA could not make the same claim.
- exposure Vendors whose pricing already draws complaints look likeliest to attract a free rebuild: Thomas's stated trigger was Adobe's cancellation fee, and Adobe agreed in March to a $150 million settlement over such fees.
Between Oct. 6 and Oct. 12 [11] REA added more than 90,000 stars, an average of 15,000 a day [12]. Oct. 11 alone brought more than 30,000 [2], about twice that average and roughly a third of the gain [13]. A star is GitHub's version of a bookmark [3], and REA had sat mostly ignored since its creation in April [2].
REA hooks coding agents such as Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex to professional software like Ghidra, which the NSA released to the public in 2019, using MCP, the protocol Anthropic created for connecting models to outside tools [4]. A user points an agent at a program and lets it dig from what happens on screen down to the binary, on desktop apps, Android apps and websites [10]. The developer's readme says REA "does not claim to recover original source code or automatically clone an application," and it does not ship its own decompiler [5].
The timing evidence is thin. A fan ported Fable 2 to Windows in September, working with an open-source AI model and a recompilation toolkit; it was the only mainline entry in the series that had never come out on PC, and the AI got it to boot in roughly an hour, with a long run of manual fixing after that [15]. A developer who posts as C22 showed GTA V running natively on iOS on Oct. 9 [16], which Decrypt said ran fluidly and described as something Rockstar Games never bothered to do [18]. The article does not say how long the manual fixes took, so the total cost of the port is unknown.
The one case aimed at software people pay for every month is ArtCraft, which Brandon Thomas built with Claude Opus 5.5 [6]. It was not built with REA [7].
We think the sources support a narrower claim than falling moats. The cost of a first pass at understanding a binary is dropping. The cost of shipping a replacement that paying customers adopt has one data point, a free Adobe look-alike. Two other outcomes fit the same facts. The ports may stay hobbyist because they fill gaps the owners left: a PC version of Fable 2 [15] and an iOS version of GTA V that Rockstar never made [18]. Or ArtCraft may draw few users. We would be wrong if a paid product shipped from a REA-assisted analysis, or if ArtCraft pulled subscribers off Adobe at a rate anyone could count.
What to watch
- Any user count or feature comparison for ArtCraft against the Adobe programs it mirrors.
- Whether REA's forks and completed projects grow in proportion to its 100,000 stars.
- A legal response from Adobe or a game publisher to a clean-room rebuild or an unofficial port.
Clarity's read
What the record supports and how the coverage leans. The claims behind it follow.
Reality
- Evidence40
- Adoption25
- Hype gap+50
- Incentives
- Insufficient
- Confidence45
Claim ledger
Ranked by verification strength, evidence, and original report placement.
- [1]
REA, short for Reverse Engineer Anything, is an open-source toolkit that connects AI coding agents to reverse-engineering tools like Ghidra; it went from fewer than 10,000 GitHub stars on October 6 to more than 100,000 by October 12.
- [2]
REA collected more than 30,000 stars on October 11 alone, after sitting mostly ignored since its creation in April.
- [4]
REA hooks AI coding assistants such as Claude Code or OpenAI's Codex up to professional tools like Ghidra, which the NSA released to the public in 2019, through MCP, the Model Context Protocol, a standard Anthropic created so AI models can plug into outside tools.
- [5]
The developer's readme states that REA "does not claim to recover original source code or automatically clone an application," and REA does not ship its own decompiler.
- [6]
Developer Brandon Thomas used Claude Opus 5.5 to build ArtCraft, a set of free, open-source apps written in Rust that mirror Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom and other Adobe programs, for Mac, Windows and Linux.
- [7]
ArtCraft is not built with REA, and Thomas calls the project a clean-room rebuild, meaning the code is written from scratch using public documentation and observed behavior, never the original code.
- [8]
Thomas says he snapped after Adobe charged him its cancellation fee one too many times.
- [9]
Adobe agreed in March to a $150 million settlement with the Justice Department, which accused it of hiding early termination fees and making subscriptions hard to cancel; the company denied wrongdoing.
- [10]
In practice a user points an agent at a program, asks how one feature works, and lets it dig from what happens on screen all the way down to the binary; it works on desktop apps, Android apps and websites.
- [11]
The window from October 6 to October 12 is six days.
- [12]
REA gained more than 90,000 stars, an average of about 15,000 a day.
- [13]
October 11's 30,000-plus stars is about twice the six-day daily average and about a third of the total gain.
- [14]
Decrypt's headline on the story is "From GTA V on iPhone to Free Photoshop: This AI Tool Is Upending Software."
- [15]
In September, a fan used an open-source AI model and a recompilation toolkit to bring Fable 2, the only mainline Fable game never released on PC, to Windows; the AI got it booting in about an hour, followed by a long stretch of manual fixes.
- [16]
A developer posting as C22 (@c22_dev) tweeted on October 9, 2026 that GTA V was running natively on iOS, a recent project of theirs.
- [17]
The uses Decrypt lists include Spider-Man swinging through the Gotham of Batman: Arkham City, about 1,600 Minecraft items added to Elden Ring, Escape from Tarkov's guns and menus dropped into Skyrim, and an unofficial Fable 2 port to PC.
- [18]
Decrypt wrote that another project got GTA V running on iOS fluidly, something not even Rockstar Games bothered doing.
Sources
1 independent publisher whose own reporting we read for this story.
- decrypt.coFrom GTA V on iPhone to Free Photoshop: This AI Tool Is Upending Software
1 article · October 12, 2026
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Topics
- Open source softwareFollow
- Software cloning and copyrightFollow
- AI Coding AgentsFollow
- Reverse EngineeringFollow
- Model Context ProtocolFollow