AI Can Copy Any App Now. Here's What People Will Still Pay For.
A reverse engineering tool called REA jumped from 13,000 to 149,000 GitHub stars in five days, and this creator uses it to make the case for what still has value once any app can be copied.
Posted
yesterday
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Essay
educational
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6K
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57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
As AI tools make it trivial to reverse engineer or rebuild any app, the apps themselves stop being the product, and the result, support, and trust behind them become what customers actually pay for.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
You run or are building a software product and want to know what actually protects you from being copied by AI.
You're curious what REA or ArtCraft do, two tools that let Claude reverse engineer or rebuild existing apps.
You build an audience or community around your work and want the business case for why that still matters.
SKIP IF…
You already do professional reverse engineering and know the Ghidra, Hopper, and IDA toolchain well. This is an introductory overview, not a technical deep dive.
You're looking for a step by step REA installation tutorial. This video explains the concept more than the setup.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
An AI reverse engineering tool called REA jumped from 13,000 to 149,000 GitHub stars in five days, right after a separate project used Claude to rebuild free copies of seven Adobe apps. REA plugs into Claude Code and other agents through MCP, drives decompiler tools like Ghidra, and hands back evidence for how a feature works, evidence developers have used to rebuild a Windows color picker, match a 1990s game's audio code byte for byte, and clone parts of a QuickBooks style accounting app. The creator's conclusion: if AI can copy any app, the code stops being the moat. What customers still pay for is the result the software delivers, someone who answers when it breaks, and the people and audience a business already has.
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REA's star count exploded the same week a separate project used Claude to clone seven Adobe apps, which set up the video's core question: if anyone can copy any app, what are people still going to pay for?
02:40 – 04:37
02 · What REA is
REA is framed as a sealed box opener: a free MCP add-on for Claude Code and other agents that drives decompiler tools like Ghidra, Hopper, and IDA to read a finished app's machine code and show its evidence for how a feature works.
04:37 – 06:39
03 · What REA can do
Three real examples: REA matched Microsoft's real PowerToys source on 8 of 9 findings from the compiled app alone, rebuilt a 1990s game's audio code to the exact byte, and was used to study a QuickBooks trial toward an open source accounting app.
06:39 – 08:15
04 · Should you use it
REA's stated rules allow security research, learning, and saving old software, and explicitly forbid breaking copy protection, game cheats, or reselling a copy of paid software. The creator flags the QuickBooks project as a legal gray area and says beginners should skip the tool for now.
08:15 – 10:18
05 · Where the moat really is
ArtCraft's team rebuilt seven Adobe apps from the outside, studying only behavior and documentation rather than code, and its Photoshop clone passed 24,000 GitHub stars in eight days even though the team admits it isn't ready for daily professional work.
10:18 – 11:07
06 · Thing 1: the result
Two products on the same underlying AI engine can charge 10x apart in price when one sells a tool and the other sells a finished outcome, like booking sales calls instead of just drafting LinkedIn posts.
11:07 – 11:45
07 · Thing 2: support
A free, AI rebuilt clone of paid software (the QuickBooks example again) is cheapest right up until something breaks during tax season, at which point the missing backups, support, and phone number become the real cost.
11:45 – 12:25
08 · Thing 3: trust
The hardest thing to copy isn't a feature, it's a specific person's audience. The creator points to his own 8,000 member paid community: competitors could copy every lesson but not the members who already trust him.
12:25 – 14:01
09 · The big picture
An app's price used to come mostly from the work of building it. As that part gets cheaper, the rest, the result, the support, and the trust and traffic behind a product, is argued to carry more of the value, closing on a one-question self-audit for the viewer's own product.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
A reverse engineering tool called REA went from about 13,000 GitHub stars to 149,000 in five days.
REA plugs into Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Gemini CLI through MCP and drives decompiler tools like Ghidra, Hopper, and IDA.
On Microsoft's PowerToys color picker, REA's guesses from the compiled app alone matched the real public source code on 8 of 9 findings.
A developer used REA to rebuild a 1990s brick breaker game's stereo sound math so precisely that all 3,205 tests matched the original's exact compiled bytes.
Someone used REA to study a QuickBooks trial and build an open source accounting app with invoices, bank imports, and reports.
REA's own rules allow security research, learning, and saving old software, but explicitly forbid breaking copy protection, building game cheats, or reselling a copy of paid software.
A separate tool called ArtCraft let one engineer rebuild free open source copies of seven Adobe apps, including Photoshop, without ever touching Adobe's code.
ArtCraft's Photoshop clone got over 24,000 GitHub stars in eight days by rebuilding the app from the outside, studying only its look and behavior.
Two apps built on the exact same underlying code can charge 10x apart: $49 a month for writing LinkedIn posts versus $500 a month for booking sales calls from LinkedIn.
As software gets easier to copy, the person who answers support calls when something breaks becomes more valuable, not less.
The creator says his 8,000 member paid community survives being copyable because members could copy every lesson but can't copy the people who already know him.
When building an app gets easy enough, the argument goes, a problem won't have 10 competing apps anymore, it will have 10,000.
Takeaway
What Still Sells When Code Is Free
THE NEW MOAT
As AI makes it easier to copy or rebuild any app, the sentence worth finishing for your own product is: if someone copied this perfectly tomorrow, why would my customers stay?
01Why everyone's talking about REA
A reverse engineering tool can sit quiet for six months, then multiply 10x in five days once a visible, relatable use case lands in front of the right audience.
Momentum spreads fastest when a new tool answers a question people were already asking, not simply because the tool itself is new.
02What REA is
Before worrying about being copied, ask what keeps a customer with you even if a competitor duplicates your product exactly.
A moat rarely lives in the code. It usually lives in response time, relationship depth, or how well you already know the customer's business.
AI reverse engineering tools connect to coding agents through MCP, the same protocol pattern used to give any agent new tools.
These tools don't just guess how an app works, they point to the exact evidence in the decompiled code that proves the answer.
03What REA can do
A useful habit before installing an unfamiliar AI tool: first ask the agent what the tool does, then install it.
A tool matched real source code on 8 of 9 architectural findings from a compiled app alone, with no access to the original code.
A 30 year old game's audio math was rebuilt precisely enough that every one of 3,205 tests matched the original down to the exact compiled bytes.
Reverse engineering a finished commercial product into an open source alternative still took real, substantial work, not a single prompt.
04Should you use it
A tool's own usage rules matter: this one explicitly supports security research and learning but disallows breaking copy protection or reselling a copy of paid software.
Studying how a competitor's app works and selling a copy of that app are different acts, and the gap between them is a real legal risk, not just a technical one.
Advanced reverse engineering tools aren't the right next step for someone who hasn't shipped a first project yet.
05Where the moat really is
An app can be rebuilt from the outside in, by studying only its observed behavior, with real demand for the result even before the clone matches the original's quality.
Outside-in behavioral cloning and inside-out decompiling are now both viable AI-assisted paths to rebuilding the same app.
06Thing 1: the result
Two products built on identical underlying code can charge 10x apart in price when one sells a tool and the other sells a finished result.
The closer a product sits to the outcome a customer actually wants, rather than the task they'd otherwise do themselves, the harder it is to undercut on price.
07Thing 2: support
A free, AI-rebuilt clone of paid software is cheapest right up until it breaks, at which point the missing support becomes the real cost.
As software gets easier to copy, the person who answers when something breaks becomes more valuable, not less.
08Thing 3: trust
The hardest thing to copy isn't a feature, it's a specific group of people who already trust a person or brand enough to buy from them again.
When building gets easy enough that one problem could spawn 10,000 competing apps, the scarce resource shifts from building the thing to getting people to care about it.
09The big picture
A practical self-audit: write down why a customer would stay if your product were copied perfectly tomorrow, then check that answer against result, support, and trust.
A paid community's real product isn't the lessons inside it, since those could be copied; it's the structure and trust that make members actually use them.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
REA
Reverse Engineer Anything, a free MCP add-on that lets AI coding agents like Claude Code inspect a finished app, down to its machine code, and explain how a feature works.
MCP
Model Context Protocol, the standard that lets an AI coding agent such as Claude connect to outside tools, including REA.
Machine code
The raw instructions a computer actually runs after an app's source code is compiled. Unreadable to humans without a decompiler.
Ghidra
A free reverse engineering program, originally built by the NSA, that turns an app's machine code back into something closer to readable code.
ArtCraft
A separate project that rebuilds apps like Photoshop from scratch by studying their outward look and behavior, without reading the original source code.
Moat
The specific reason a customer stays with a product even if a competitor copies its features exactly.
“A moat is just the thing that keeps competitors from copying you.”
clean, standalone definition that reframes the whole video→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
07:37
“Think of REA like a locksmith's set of picks. Owning one is legal. What you open with it is the part that matters.”
sharp analogy that lands the ethical line in one breath→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
11:26
“Free code is cheap until it breaks. Then it's the most expensive thing you own.”
tight punchline built for a pull quote→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
12:37
“Someone could copy every lesson in the club tomorrow. They can't copy the 8,000 people in the club who already know me.”
personal stakes make the abstract argument concrete→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
13:13
“If someone copied my product perfectly tomorrow, why would my customers stay?”
the central question of the whole video, works as a cold open for anyone→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
14:00
“Anyone can copy your app now. Nobody can copy the people who trust you.”
closing line, built as a quotable summary→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
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metaphoranalogy
Everyone and their mom is talking about one GitHub repo right now. It's called REA and that stands for Reverse Engineer Anything. You point Claude at an app you don't have the code for and Claude figures out...
how it works then you can rebuild it from scratch for free it has over 149 000 stars on github but here's the weird part it's six months old and for almost all of that time nobody cared last wednesday it had about 13 000 stars five days later it had 149 000. so why is everyone talking about it now it blew up the same week someone used quad to build free copies of photoshop and six other adobe apps so people were already asking how far ai can go with copying apps rea showed up with an answer one post on x put it like this we spent years teaching ai to write software now we're teaching it to take software apart when i first saw it i figured it was a hacker tool i'd never touch but it actually answers a question i've been stuck on since my last video which was about those adobe copies if anyone can copy an app what are people going to pay for.
So here's a quick test you can run on your own product right now. Ask yourself one question about whatever you sell. If someone copied my product perfectly tomorrow, why would my customers stay?
Whatever your answer is, that's your moat. A moat is just the thing that keeps competitors from copying you. And if you can't answer that question, you first need to give your customers a reason to stay.
Maybe you answer their messages the same day. Maybe you already know their business inside and out. Maybe they just like working with you.
None of those have anything to do with your code. Get one of those first before you worry about anyone copying your app. So I'll show you what REA actually does and who should and shouldn't touch it.
Then I'll give you the three things people will still pay for when anyone can copy anything. The third one is the one I'm betting my whole business on. If you like building cool things with Claude, I co -founded the Claude Code Club.
That's where we build stuff like this together and the links in my description. Before any of that, you need to understand one thing. Every app on your computer is a sealed box.
Photoshop, Notion, the game you played as a kid. You get the box, but you never get the code inside it. For a long time, opening that box took a specialist and a lot of patience.
What the REA repo does is hand that sealed box to Claude so Claude can open it up and see how the app works. So what is REA really? Well, REA is a free add -on for you.
your AI agent. It works with Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini, CLI, and a few others. It plugs in through something called MCP, which is just a way to give Claude new tools.
Installing it is easy. Just paste the GitHub link into Claude Code and say, install this for me. Claude sets it up, and then you restart Claude Code.
Pro tip, before you install it, paste the same link and ask Claude what this repo does and how you could use it. Now, Cloud has a toolbox for looking inside apps. So here's how it works under the hood.
When a company ships an app, its code gets turned into machine code. That's the ones and zeros your computer runs and a human can't read it. There are other programs that turn machine code back into something a human can read.
The big ones are called Ghidra, Hopper, and IDA. Ghidra is free, and fun fact, the NSA built it. REA lets Claude drive those programs for you.
Claude asks a question, REA digs into the app, and it shows you the exact spots in the app that prove its answer, so you know it isn't guessing. It also tells you what it couldn't figure out. Think of it like a chef at a restaurant.
Normal coding with Claude is cooking from a recipe card. You have the formula so you can make it. REA is the chef who can figure out the entire recipe and every ingredient from a single bite.
The example prompt in their own repo is simple. You type this into Claude. Understand how search works in the notes app.
Show me the evidence and build a similar feature for my project. Swap notes for any app and swap search for any feature you like. The last part is the line that got everyone talking.
Build a similar feature for my project. Another pro tip is give Claude screenshots of the feature you want or tell it to open the app and look for itself. The more Claude can see, the better it does.
So how far can it actually go? The use cases people have come up with. are wild.
So what are people actually building with it? Well, here are three real examples. The first use case comes from a developer named Mukesh Murugan.
He pointed REA at the color picker in Power Toys, which is Microsoft's free toolkit for Windows. He only gave Claude the finished app, not the code. But Microsoft's code for that app is public, so he could check REA's answers against what Microsoft actually built.
Aria got eight out of nine findings fully right. Then he used what it found to build his own color picker in under 750 lines of code. The second use case is a game called DX Ball.
It's a brick breaker game from the 1990s. One developer even used REA to find the exact math the game uses to move the sound from your left speaker to your right as the ball moves. Then they rebuilt that math from scratch.
The rebuilt version matched the original game in all 3 ,205 tests down to the exact bytes. That's a 30 year old game rebuilt without ever seeing its code. And the third use case is one that made me stop scrolling another developer pointed rea at a free trial of quickbooks the accounting app then they built their own open source accounting app with invoices bank imports and reports even they say rea didn't hand them the original code or a finished product in one step and that it took real work but think about that one person studied a paid app that's worth billions of dollars and built their own version of it and it goes way past desktop apps the repo lists websites android apps the code inside devices and even crash reports now some people on x say a lot of those stars are just hype people clicking a star to save it for later and that's fair but the downloads tell the same story In September, the install package got downloaded about 100 times a week.
Last week, it got downloaded 128 ,470 times. So people aren't just starring it, they're actually installing it. But just because you can point REA at any app doesn't mean you should.
So should you install it? I'll give you my honest take, and it might not be the one you expect. Think of REA like a locksmith's set of picks.
Owning one is legal. What you open with it is the part that matters. The makers are really clear about this.
REA is for security, research, learning, making your own app work with other apps, saving old software, and checking software you own. Their own rules say they won't help you break copy protection, build game cheats, or copy someone else's paid software. So that QuickBook project sits right in the gray area.
Studying how an app works is one thing. copying it is another, and trying to sell your own copy of someone else's product is a major red flag. And reverse engineering an app can break its license agreement depending on where you live and what you agree to.
I'm not a lawyer, so if you're doing this for a business, ask one. So who should use it? If you do security work, this was built for you.
If your company still runs an old tool and nobody has the code anymore, this is huge for you. And if you want to understand how a feature works so you can build your own version, It's an amazing way to learn.
So who shouldn't use it? If you haven't shipped your first project with Claude yet, skip it for now. The deep stuff needs extra programs like Hopper or Ghidra and it gets technical fast.
I've never written a line of code by hand in my life. I build with Claude every single day and I'm still not the main user for this tool. So for most of you, the tool itself isn't what matters.
What it means for the apps you build is what matters because REA isn't the only repo like this. A couple days ago, I made a whole video about another one called Artcraft. And when you put Artcraft and REA together, it all comes down to one simple.
Question, if anyone can copy anything, what are people actually going to pay for? To answer that, you need to see what Artcraft pulled off. An engineer named Brandon Thomas used Cloud to build free open source copies of seven Adobe apps, including Photoshop, Premiere, and Lightroom.
The Photoshop copy alone got over 24 ,000 stars on GitHub in eight days, and his team never touched Adobe's code. They rebuilt every app from scratch using public documents and by studying how Adobe's apps look and. behave.
If you want the full breakdown of all seven apps, I'll link that video right here. So put those two repos side by side. artcraft never opened Adobe sealed box, they rebuilt the apps from scratch from the outside.
rea opens the box and looks inside all the way down to the machine code. So now quad can rebuild an app from the outside and look at one from the inside. So there's not much left of an app that stays hidden.
Now, are the copies as good as the real thing? Not yet. Artcraft's own team says their Photoshop copy isn't ready for daily professional work, but the cost of copying an app just dropped like a rock and it keeps dropping.
So back to that question. If anyone can copy anything, what are people going to pay for? And honestly, the answer was sitting in my own business the whole time.
The Cloud Code Club is $9 a month and has over 8 ,000 members. And there's a lot of content about Cloud Code on YouTube for free. But people pay anyway.
So why? Because they like the way we teach. So they trust us.
And free YouTube is a lot of noise. You watch 10 different people and you still don't know what to do first. Inside the club, you get a clear structure and you know exactly what to focus on next.
So they believe the club gets them better results in less time and with less effort. And they feel more sure it'll actually work.
So the content was never the thing they were paying for. So here are the three things they are paying for and the three things people will still pay for when anyone can copy anything. The first thing people will still pay for is the result.
Picture two products built on the exact same code. One is a $49 a month app that helps you write LinkedIn posts. The other is $500 a month and it books sales calls for you from LinkedIn.
The code underneath is the same, but one charges 10 times more. The first one sells a tool and anyone with Claude can copy a tool. The second one sells a result and a result needs someone who knows what works, keeps tuning it, and stands behind it.
The closer you get to the money your customer actually wants, the harder you are to copy. Think about photos. Your phone made taking a photo free.
But wedding photographers still charge thousands because couples pay for the day to be captured right by someone they trust. And that word trust leads right into the second thing. The second thing people will still pay for is someone who answers when it breaks.
Say you run a business doing $2 million a year. Remember that QuickBooks copy from earlier? You can run your books on a free accounting app that a stranger rebuilt from a trial, or you can pay for the real one with backup support and a phone number.
Your numbers come out wrong the week your taxes are due. Which one do you want? Free code is cheap until it breaks.
Then it's the most expensive thing you own. So as apps get easier to copy, the person standing behind the app gets more valuable. That's the second thing.
But the third one matters more than both, and it's the one I'm betting my whole business on. The third thing people will still pay for is you and the people who already trust you. Picture what happens next.
When anyone can build an app in a weekend, there won't be 10 apps for every problem. There will be 10 ,000. So the hard part stops being building the thing.
The hard part becomes getting anyone to care. The person who already has an audience, a community, or a list of customers who trust them wins that game they can build something on monday and have buyers by friday that's why i spend my time on youtube and in the cloud code club and almost no time worrying about someone copying my stuff someone could copy every lesson in the club tomorrow they can't copy the 8 000 people in the club who already know me so does all this mean software is dead no it means the part of an app's price that came from this was hard to build is going away and the result the support The trust behind an app and your ability to get traffic and win customers are all getting more valuable every month.
So here's the recap. REA lets Claude look inside apps without having the code. Use it if you do security work, rescue old software, or want to learn how a feature works.
Skip it if you're just getting started. And when anyone can copy anything, people still pay for three things. They pay for the result, for someone who answers when it breaks, and for the people who already trust you.
So here's your one thing for this week. Ask the question from the start of this video. If someone copied my product perfectly tomorrow, why would my customers stay?
Write your answer down in one sentence, then check your product against the three things people still pay for. First, can your customers point to a real result like more sales or hours saved every week? Second, if something breaks, do they know they can reach you and get it fixed?
And third, do people already know and trust you? And do you have a way to get in front of new customers? Every yes is part of your moat.
Find the one that's a no and spend this week fixing it. And if you want to build things with Cloud that people will actually pay for, that's what the Cloud Code Club is for.
It's a step -by -step path to master Cloud Code in 45 days, and it has lessons on turning what you build into something people pay for. It's $9 a month, and the link's in the description. Anyone can copy your app now.
Nobody can copy the people who trust you.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
A GitHub repo called REA sat quietly at around 13,000 stars for six months, then jumped past 149,000 in five days, right after someone used Claude to build working copies of Adobe's entire app suite. This breakdown walks through what REA actually does, where the line sits between learning and copying, and the three things the creator argues are still worth paying for once any app can be copied.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
11:45list
Three things people will still pay for
The result
Someone who answers when it breaks
The people who already trust you
After arguing that AI makes any app copyable, the video narrows the case down to three things that stay scarce, and therefore valuable, regardless of how easy the code is to duplicate.
Steal fora quick defensibility audit for any software or content business
07:05list
REA's allowed and disallowed uses
For: security research, learning, making apps work together, saving old software, checking software you own
Won't: breaking copy protection, building game cheats, copying paid software to resell
The tool's own stated boundary between legitimate reverse engineering and software piracy.
Steal forframing ethical/legal limits when evaluating any new AI dev tool
CTA Breakdown
How they asked for the click.
VERBAL ASK
14:00product
“It's $9 a month, and the link's in the description.”
Soft-pitches his own paid Claude Code Club community twice: a brief early aside, then a closing tie back to the video's own thesis that audience and trust are what stays defensible.
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A three-level walkthrough of prompting, saving a design system, and layering in AI-rendered images to turn one topic into a branded Instagram carousel.
A week-old open-source project called ArtCraft cloned Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, Lightroom, InDesign, and Acrobat for free, mostly by pointing Claude Opus at the problem, and this breaks down which clones are actually ready to use today.
Every night at 1am, 3am, 4am, and 5am, a set of Claude Code agents build something, grade themselves against a rubric, and write their own rules before the next run.
One creator claims Claude Opus 5.5 replaced the $1,500-a-month editor who used to make his Instagram Reels, and walks through the eight-step system that does it.
A screen-recorded read-through of Anthropic's own prompting playbook for Opus 5.5, tip by tip, with a mid-video pitch for the creator's $9 Claude Code community.
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