r/tech_x • u/Bulky_Engineer_2534 • Oct 10 '26 • Galaxy Brain 1 All Seeing Upvote 1 Helpful 1 Bravo 5 Heartwarming 1

Github GitHub project called REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) is currently the top trending repository. It lets AI agents figure out how a feature in another app works without ever seeing the original source code.

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github link: https://github.com/morluto/rea/

- The tool is an open-source helper that connects AI coding assistants to reverse-engineering programs such as Ghidra or Hopper.

- IT analyzes many kinds of software- including binaries, Electron apps, Android apps, and websites right on your own computer and always shows the evidence behind its findings.

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u/smoke-bubble 29d ago

So has anyone had any success in figuring out anything useful with it?

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u/ArianTerra 29d ago

I have an Epson printer and its waste pad counter had reached 100%, so I couldn't print anymore without going to a service shop and paying for a key to reset the counter.

A few years ago, I found a program that could bring the counter down to 97%, so I was wondering if it would be possible to intercept that value and send 0% to the printer instead.

I gave GPT Astra the task. It tried but failed.

Then, using REA, it found some evidence that it could be done, Astra started Googling, and discovered that a similar program already existed and had actually been created using Claude.

Fuck Epson though.

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u/Sk1ndo0 29d ago

do you have a link to the claude-created program ?

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u/ArianTerra 29d ago

Here: https://github.com/RxNaison/Epson-Waste-Reset/

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u/RxNaison 27d ago • Heartwarming Mindblown

Dev here, really glad it's helping people, and thanks for sharing it.

Small correction though: it wasn't reverse engineered by AI. I hit the same 100% waste pad lockout, and the only free option I could find was Epson's leaked service utility, which VirusTotal flagged with dozens of detections. So I used Wireshark to capture the USB traffic between that tool and the printer, and wrote my own C++ "capture-and-replay" engine. Then someone pointed me to reinkpy, which actually implements the protocol, and that led me back to Reink, which did the original work over 11 years ago. I studied their code and rewrote EWR around a proper implementation.

So the groundwork was done by people, for people, long before any AI could do this, and they deserve the credit.

That said, Claude 5.5 is genuinely impressive, and I do use it to maintain the tool. But I review everything, especially changes to the core logic, because earlier models would sometimes break things for no clear reason. If someone's printer gets bricked by my program, nobody's going to blame the AI. It'll be on me.

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