REA

REA (Reverse Engineer Anything, author morluto) is one local CLI and one MCP server. An agent, or the rea command, asks it to inspect a target and it returns findings with the evidence and the limits of that evidence. The npm package is rea-agents. Both bins, rea and rea-agents, point at scripts/rea.mjs. License MIT.

Checked 2 November 2026 against the GitHub API, package.json on main, the README, DISCLAIMER.md, the start of SECURITY.md, and the npm registry. This note did not install REA and did not run it.

Get it from morluto/rea, rea.tools, or the rea-agents package. The README says a similar repository name or a copied README does not make a download official. Guides: rea.tools/guides. Showcases: rea.tools/showcase. Discord: discord.gg/GkcryMnJDM.

Snapshot

The repo was created 14 April 2026. Default branch main. Language TypeScript. GitHub size is 137,536 KB. A later vault note, Awesome Reverse Engineered, already recorded an API reading of 351,629 stars against this note's 11,741. The 2 November count is another API reading. This note does not explain the size of the move.

package.json and the published package both say 6.8.0. main still has commits after the 25 October tag. The README tells you to check release availability for features added since the latest npm release. A fact read from main on this date is not automatically in the 6.8.0 tarball.

What the current README says it can open

Analysis runs on the machine. The FAQ says the agent receives tool results, and the model provider has its own data policy. Static JavaScript and .NET inspection read the supplied files and do not run the application. Runtime capture runs or interacts with the selected target using the caller's user permissions.

Deep native analysis uses Hopper, Ghidra, IDA, or Kuna. Setup can install Hopper after you approve it. Ghidra, IDA, and Kuna use installations you already have. Static JavaScript and .NET inspection need no native engine. Offline native inspection can also use caller-supplied GNU objdump or Rizin. REA does not install those two.

The README's target table, read on this date, also names desktop installation markers, Go and Rust binaries, GPU code objects, GGUF and safetensors headers, IL2CPP metadata, Godot PCK, PE certificates and imports, ELF notes, Apple IPS crashes, Linux kernel modules, Erlang BEAM, WASM (caller-supplied WABT 1.0.42), EVM bytecode, SQLite, recorded Linux crashes, websites, HAR or Fiddler SAZ captures, Android APKs (headless JADX and a full JDK), firmware, recorded packets, logic-signal recordings, packages and Apple bundles, process behavior, and PyInstaller executables. Linux static JavaScript, Electron, Ghidra, JADX, and firmware launches need a procps-compatible ps on PATH.

On Linux, the process-ownership check is a prerequisite named in the README, with recovery steps in docs/installation.md. This note did not re-count MCP tools. docs/product-catalog.json, which the 7 October note used, returned 404. The README badge now points at the generated catalog in docs/mcp-contracts.md.

Setup's own sentence lists Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Grok Build, and other agents in the installation guide. The FAQ says any client that can launch a local MCP server can be registered by hand. MCP input schemas are compact unless REA_MCP_INPUT_SCHEMA_PROFILE=full. Output schemas are complete unless REA_MCP_OUTPUT_SCHEMA_PROFILE is compact or off.

npx rea-agents setup
npm install --global rea-agents
rea update
npx rea-agents@latest setup

rea update is the path for a global npm or Bun install. The README says Bun global updates need Bun 1.2.17 or newer, and that the updater keeps at most 4 MiB of combined stdout and stderr. One-off commands use npx rea-agents@latest or bunx rea-agents@latest.

The README names three showcases (a DX-Ball sound pan, a Notion clipboard bridge, and a TH04 bullet-ring calculation) and a separate guide for turning a recorded web session into an AgentEnv environment. Those pages were not opened for this check. The numbers in the showcase blurbs are the README's claims.

Limits the project states

DISCLAIMER.md says REA is for lawful analysis: security research, malware and incident analysis, vulnerability research and coordinated disclosure, CTFs and education, interoperability, software preservation, and debugging software you own or are allowed to examine. It says the project will not help with DRM or license circumvention, game cheats, bypassing authentication or access controls on systems you are not allowed to test, copying proprietary software, evading a model provider's safety measures, or reselling AI accounts. Local operation does not by itself authorize execution, traffic capture, or device changes. Decompiler output can be wrong. IDA, Hopper, and JEB stay under their own licenses. REA does not supply a key for them.

SECURITY.md says fixes are for the latest published version. Report a vulnerability through GitHub private reporting, or by email to morluto@outlook.com. Do not put proof-of-concept exploits, credentials, or private provider projects in a public issue. Hopper and Ghidra bridges use a per-session random capability token. POSIX uses a current-user Unix socket. The same file says this is not a sandbox and does not protect against another process already running as the same user. Opening an untrusted binary hands parsing to the selected local provider with that user's permissions.

Reading from 7 October 2026

The sections below are the note as checked on 7 October 2026, against npm 4.1.0 and main at c7530f9. They were not re-verified on 2 November 2026. Where they disagree with the snapshot above, the 2 November reading is the later one.

The site named then was morluto.github.io/rea. The MCP name in package.json was io.github.morluto/rea. Manual MCP was pinned to rea-agents@4.1.0. rea uninstall removed REA-owned MCP registrations and the managed skill. rea uninstall --purge-data also removed ~/.rea/cache and ~/.rea/state, left Hopper, Node.js, Evidence files, and captures in place, and refused to follow purge-data symlinks. Named setup agents then included Claude Desktop, Windsurf, Devin, OpenCode, Antigravity, GitHub Copilot CLI, Command Code, and VS Code, in addition to the clients still named in the 2 November README sentence.

When more than one installed engine could open a target, REA did not choose. The open failed with code: "capability_unavailable" and details.selection_reason: "ambiguous". An explicit --provider, provider_id on open_binary, or REA_ANALYSIS_PROVIDER selected one.

The README on c7530f9 grouped the investigation surface as 41 native inspection tools, 14 investigation workflows, 7 native macOS utilities, 5 artifact-graph tools, 7 managed PE/CLI tools, 2 firmware tools, 5 Android APK tools, 9 browser tools, 5 Electron tools, 2 JavaScript runtime tools, 13 application workflows, and 21 workspace tools. Those counts summed to 131, plus six guided workflows on prompts/list. rea capabilities was not that full inventory. Exact counts were generated into docs/product-catalog.json.

Hosts named then for the main product: macOS 12 or newer, Ubuntu 24.04+, Fedora 41+, and 64-bit Arch Linux. Windows was a narrower surface: experimental Windows x64 Ghidra for native, non-managed, non-DLL x86-64 PE on fixed local NTFS, with 25 read-only operations. Native Windows process capture stayed unavailable. Historical source import ran on Linux and macOS. Optional JavaScript source recovery was a Linux x64 adapter and needed caller-supplied Wakaru 1.13.0. The Later list then included native runtime observation (LLDB, Frida) and an evaluation of Binary Ninja, Rizin, and LIEF. The 2 November tree contains bridge/native/rea_lldb_tracer.py, docs/frida-instrumentation.md, and docs/kuna-provider.md, so that Later list is not a description of main on this date. This note did not read those new guides.

CLI and MCP shared evidence contracts. A result carried artifact identity, provider, locations, confidence, and limitations. Process capture used the caller's user permissions and was not a security sandbox.

See also: Agent Infrastructure And Platforms · Security Tools · Awesome Reverse Engineered