Big Idea

The argument in one line.

Pointing an AI agent team at how a working app actually behaves, instead of asking it to guess, lets you rebuild only the features you need and add your own.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You pay for software where you only use one or two features and you'd rather build a lean version that does exactly that.
You already use Claude Code or Lovable and want a repeatable way to turn an existing app into a build prompt.
You're curious how to safely install a trending GitHub repo with agents and skills without polluting your main setup.

SKIP IF…

You want a deep technical look at how REA analyzes code. The video shows results and workflow, not internals.
You're looking for legal guidance. Only a brief warning about terms of use is given.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

Reverse Engineer Anything (REA) is a GitHub repo of agents and skills that studies how an existing app's features work, so an AI can rebuild them instead of guessing at the interface. The presenter installs it into a dedicated Claude Code folder after asking Claude to scan it for anything malicious, then feeds it three free GitHub apps. ShareX becomes a screen recorder with an editor in about 30 minutes, a second screenshot tool is rebuilt through a Lovable prompt, and a Whisper dictation app follows. He adds his own features and warns about terms of use, security and support.

Free for members

Chat with this breakdown — free.

Sign in and you get 23 free chat messages on us — ask for the hook, quote a framework, find the exact transcript moment, generate a markdown action plan. Bring your own key when you want unlimited.

Create a free account →

Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:53

01 · Cold open and promise

Shows the finished recorder and promises three live builds from free GitHub tools.

00:53 – 02:18

02 · What REA is

The locksmith analogy: study how features work rather than guessing the interface.

02:18 – 04:24

03 · Is software dead? Reality check

Why rebuilding single features makes sense, plus the real costs of launching software: marketing, support, security.

04:24 – 07:04

04 · Terms of use and safe install

Warning about lawsuits and fake repos, then the plan to isolate REA in its own folder and have Claude scan it.

07:04 – 08:36

05 · Installing in VS Code

Creating the reverse engineering lab folder, the install prompt, and bypass permissions after the scan.

08:36 – 10:26

06 · App 1: ShareX screen recorder

Picks ShareX, adds camera, mic and editing features, and lets Claude build it.

10:26 – 12:32

07 · Result: Leverage Studio

Demo of the finished recorder with text-based editing, AI cuts, callouts, blurs and lower thirds.

12:32 – 16:22

08 · App 2: screenshot tool via Lovable

Has the REA team write a Lovable prompt, builds it, and demos annotations, arrows and numbered steps.

16:22 – 18:42

09 · App 3: dictation app

Builds a Whisper-style dictation and meeting transcription tool from an open source alternative.

18:42 – 19:09

10 · Wrap up

Pick features you like from different tools and combine them into your own.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

Asking an AI to 'build something like Trello' makes it guess the interface; analyzing how the real tool's features work gives it something concrete to rebuild.
Installing a trending repo's agents and skills into one isolated folder keeps them out of every other Claude Code project you run.
Ask Claude to scan a GitHub repo for malicious code before you install it, and only switch to bypass permissions after the scan passes.
Fake clones of trending repos are common, so confirm the exact owner and repo name before you download anything.
Most people pay for software and use one basic feature, which is exactly the case where rebuilding a lean version makes sense.
Launching software means marketing it, supporting customers and securing it, and building the app is the smallest part of that.
Copying a tool outright can expose you to a lawsuit if its terms of use forbid rebuilding it, so copy a feature idea, not the product.
The reverse engineering team can write a prompt for Lovable, which handles the backend and design faster than building everything locally.
Anything built in Lovable creates a GitHub repo, so you can pull it down and keep extending it in Claude Code.
Name the extra features you want when you hand over the app to study, such as audio capture or an editor, and the rebuild includes them.

Takeaway

Rebuild the feature, not the whole product

WHAT TO LEARN

An agent that studies how a real app works beats one that guesses, but safe installs, clear goals and respect for terms of use decide whether the result is worth shipping.

02What REA is

Agents that analyze how an existing tool's features behave produce a closer rebuild than a prompt like 'make something like Trello', which forces the model to invent the interface.

03Is software dead? Reality check

Rebuilding makes the most sense for tools where you use one feature and pay for forty, so decide which single feature you actually need before you start.
Launching software is mostly marketing, customer support and security, so a working demo is the beginning of the job, not the end.

04Terms of use and safe install

Copy the idea of a feature, not the product. Read the original's terms of use first, because many forbid rebuilding the software.
Confirm the exact repo owner and name before installing, since fake copies of trending repos are common.
Install third party agents and skills into one isolated folder and ask Claude to scan the repo for malicious code before anything runs.

05Installing in VS Code

Switch to bypass permissions only after the scan and install are done, so you skip the constant prompts without running unchecked code.

06App 1: ShareX screen recorder

State the extra features you want up front, such as camera, mic and editing, and the rebuild combines them with the original's feature set.

08App 2: screenshot tool via Lovable

A local build with a backend takes longer and costs more credits, while handing a generated prompt to Lovable gets a working front end and backend faster.
Lovable output lands in a GitHub repo, so you can pull it down and keep extending it in Claude Code once the prototype proves out.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Reverse Engineer Anything (REA): A GitHub repo of agents and skills that analyzes how an existing app's features work so an AI can rebuild them.
Bypass permissions: A Claude Code mode that stops it from asking approval for each edit or install. Faster, but only safe after you've checked what it's about to run.
Lovable: An AI app builder that generates the front end and backend from a prompt and saves the project to a GitHub repo.
ShareX: A free open source Windows tool for screen capture, region capture, GIFs and file sharing.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:24toolReverse Engineer Anything (morluto/REA on GitHub)

08:00toolShareX

12:35toolLovable

07:00toolVS Code

07:00linkClaude Code install video (presenter's older video)

16:00toolOpen Whisper alternative

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:53

“If I was a locksmith and I told you to come to my house and pick a lock... a locksmith knows exactly what's in the lock, the components.”

clean analogy that explains the whole tool in one breath→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

02:18

“Imagine how many softwares you're paying for that you're only using one basic feature.”

relatable pain point with no setup needed→ TikTok hook↗ 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.

Not bad for a first initial run, but look at that. I legit created my own video recording software. Exactly what the title reads.

You're going to be able to reverse engineer any kind of app that's out there. And today, not only are we going to help you install it, but more importantly, we're going to show you how this thing actually works. And we're going to give it three live examples by using three free tools that we found on GitHub, just so you guys can go ahead and test this out.

So stay tuned and build along with us. So this thing is pretty crazy. If you look at my screen, it's been the number one GitHub trending repo for over the last week, and it keeps going up day by day.

It's literally accumulated over close to 200 ,000 stars in less than a week's timeframe. Now, what's crazy about this thing is it literally does what it says it's supposed to do, where it's going to go ahead and reverse engineer anything that it's been given. So what it is today is what we're going to cover.

We're going to get three free apps that we're going to basically build together. Now, the next things that we're going to have and is what exactly. is this thing.

So if I was a locksmith and I told you to come to my house and pick a lock, a lock is secure. A lot of people are not going to go do it, but a locksmith knows exactly what's in the lock, the components, and eventually he tinkers with it so the lock can open. Well, it's the same kind of thing when we're building an app.

So if you really think about it, have AI that's going to be looking in the apps, what it's going to look for is how the features work. It's going to show the proof and then it's going to allow you to build your own. See before when you were asking, you know, Claude or anything else, hey, build me something like Trello or build me something like, you know, loom recorder or anything of that sort.

What was happening is it was kind of going in and guessing about the interface and not really looking into how the features work and how they interact. So what this does a little bit differently is instead of like kind of guessing it comes in, it actually analyzes the tool, looks for all the features and then tries to identify how the features actually work.

So the next part of that is you're going to basically write your own version of it. And then I would personally always add a couple of different features. Now, the reason why this is so good is that, you know, a lot of people are out there, you know, you're trying to build an app, you really want certain functionality and it's not working right.

Now, a lot of people are just going to downright copy tools. I'm not telling you to do that. Again, my legal team and everything else will tell you and advise me that that is not an appropriate way to say, but just for thinking about the way you want things to work.

Imagine I'm building a pretty complex tool, like an onboarding tool for my clients. And there were specific features that I know that one tool has, but I don't know how they necessarily work. This is exactly where it comes in.

Now, the biggest thing is, is software dead? No, it's not. If anything, this is going to allow us to build better software because imagine how many softwares you're out there paying for that you're only using one basic feature or that you only need one feature to really honestly work.

And that's exactly what this thing is for. Now, the other thing that I want to make sure you guys realize, at the end of the day, launching a software is no joke. A lot of people that are out there claiming that they're doing it are absolutely full of crap because the thing is, when you're launching a software, there's a lot of things.

One, you have to be able to market it. Secondly, you have to be able to customer service of handling a tool. Third, and probably the most important part about this whole thing, you have to know security and you have to ensure that everything you're building inside the app is secure.

Whether you're putting it into the Apple store, whether you're putting it in a Google store, and I'm telling you, in launching a few apps over the last year, this is not something that you can take lightly. Launching the app in itself and building something out that's worthwhile is going to be a little difficult because if you don't know what you're doing, you can go out there and you can make a pretty big mess.

Now, that is not to discourage you. That's just to understand that it's not a get free rich kind of scheme, but you got to have those three factors that are probably the most important factors in there.

to completely done. Now, here's what's great about and what's worth building. You want to copy a feature that you think is going to work relevant to your staff or what you're trying to do.

And then from there on, build it from there. The other thing is you also got to be really careful. You go out there and dead right copy somebody else's software.

You are held liable for a lawsuit if you don't read the terms of use. And a lot of them do say, do not copy this software or rebuild it in any kind of form or fashion. And if you ignore that, then you are liable for a suit.

So this is all the things that, you know, the gurus are not talking about. and I'm going to do it a little differently, right? So an app is locked.

There's no code. There's no key. And basically what's happening here is again, you're looking for a feature and it's looking for how it actually physically works.

So today what we're going to do is we're going to build three free apps. Now these apps are on GitHub and we're going to go ahead and we're going to grab these and this is the ones that we're going to rebuild. So what we're going to do is again, the GitHub repo is right down here.

We're going to grab that GitHub repo, go in there and get reverse engineer anything to actually go ahead and rebuild this app. I'm also going to show you how to properly install it and ensure that you're running a couple security checks so it doesn't actually do anything harmful to the computer.

Not that it won't, but remember whenever downloading anything from GitHub, you always want to make sure you're really careful. So what we're going to do is first thing is we're going to scan and then install reverse engineer anything. All right, so right here you have GitHub forward slash M -O -R -L -U -T -O forward slash R -E -A.

Make sure that this is the one that you're going to download because This is going to be the one that is out there that is not fake. There's a lot of fake ones out there.

I can tell you from experience here. So be really careful. I'm just going to copy it.

And what I'll do is I'm going to go into my regular drive. I'm going to create a folder and I'm actually going to develop an agent team. That's going to add all these different skills, reverse engineering and everything else.

into a folder and then I'm going to operate at that folder whenever I'm rebuilding anything. This is my precautionary way of doing this because I don't want to install all these skills in every single version of my cloud code or Hermes or whatever it is. So I want to isolate it to ensure that it's only working in this particular file and folder.

And then even before I do that, I want to make sure I tell cloud to scan this whole entire thing to ensure that I'm getting proper code and I'm not getting anything malicious that can actually hurt my computer or worse yet. you know, hurt me and kind of my process and my computer and everything I have built inside. So inside of here, I made a folder inside my dev folder, which is where I build everything.

And I called the reverse engineering lab. All right. And then what I did is I'm going to come over here.

I use visual studio code. You can use regular cloud code. It's up to you.

So you can go into your cloud code, make sure you're on the code side. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the code side. And now that I built my folder, what I'm going to do is when I create a new chat, I'm going to go and choose environment.

And I'm going to go to local. And I'm going to pick the folder that I want. And then I can choose a folder in here, which again, mine is always going to be dev.

And then inside of here, I can always give it a folder. And inside a folder, it's going to be my folder that I mentioned before the reverse engineering lab, and I've already built my folder. But this is where I'm going to do and I'm going to go ahead and select folder.

Now before I do any of this, The next thing I want to do is I want to come in here and I'm just going to write a quick simple prompt and I'm going to say, Hey, do me a favor. I want to install this GitHub repo, all its agents and skills directly into this folder.

And I want to create a team that's going to allow me to build and reverse engineer features as particular apps. Please go ahead and scan this entire repo to ensure that there's nothing harmful in my computer. And then let's go ahead and install it.

All right. And then what I would do is I would come in here and I would just paste in the repo. Now I told you, I prefer.

building in VS code. And if you're wondering how to install all this, watch my cloud code install video, it's an older video, but honestly, it still works. So what I'm going to do in here is I'm going to open up a new window in VS code, just because I prefer still working in VS code, even though that cloud is making a lot of advancements in how to install this stuff, but I just like doing it in here, I'm going to come into my VS code.

I go ahead and I open that folder. Like I mentioned before, once I opened the folder, I'm going to go ahead and post the same exact thing. One scan this GitHub repo to make sure it's good to install all the files and create an agent team that will become a reverse engineering team that will basically go ahead and do this for me going forward.

Once you hit this, you want to hit. Go. And then what I will do is basically install this folder structure just like I have in mine.

All right. So with that being said, and mine is already installed. The other thing that I want to make sure you do is if you leave it on auto mode, you're going to get a bunch of crazy permission things or edit automatically.

You want to get to bypass permissions. Now bypass permissions will allow you to install anything and do a lot of things in there. If you don't have it in bypass permissions, it will ask you a lot of questions and it's super annoying.

All right. So just make sure you. yourself and bypass permissions but only after you do the scan and only after it's installed in the particular folder right now that this is done the next thing i'm going to do is get the github repo now the github repo that i chose there was a reason why i chose it so the first github repo that i picked is share x now i don't know about you but recording software is incredibly expensive or it just doesn't always work the way i want it to work so my idea is to create my own screen recording software that allows me to do different things and share x is a free license out there it's a screen capture file sharing productivity tool so what it does is it does full screen capture it does active window capture does region capture scrolling it creates gifs it does auto capture and everything else and i want to build something incredibly similar and i want to add my own features because i want to add an mcp where it edits videos after it captures it because that happens to be one of the biggest pain points of what i'm trying to do especially when i'm trying to teach all you wonderful people right i'm going to come over here i'm going to copy it and i'm going to show you my process

I'm going to say, hey, I want to create the screen share tool, but I want to add one additional feature. The one additional feature is I want to be able to edit my particular screen share because I'm going to do it in a way that I teach. And not only screen share, but I also want to record my camera and my mic at the same exact time.

Those are features that I want added to my version of this. grab all the features that this thing offers, and then add the component of audio and also add the component of being able to edit any of the recordings that I do. And I want a place where my face can actually go in.

And I want to make sure that that my face and my voice are one set of screens and sounds and that the sound from the system is another one. But I want all those three components being three different things that I can edit. And I want us to be a blend of this.

and have that recording aspect of it all right and then i'm going to give it this and then it's going to go ahead and do its thing so we're going to let this thing run for a while it is going to take a good while and a good amount of credits because i am rebuilding an entire software so this is what it's going to be doing and once it's done doing that i'll be back and i'll show you kind of like the preliminary results of it and then we can go from there i'm also going to show you a shortcut that you can use with lovable where you can give this exact thing to lovable and then it will build it out directly in there.

And I'm going to show you that next. So are you ready for this? This is called leverage studio.

This is based off some recommendations and again, the reverse engineering of the particular free tier software. And then I ask it to add things based on some other software that I liked that had some editing parts to it. Now, look, it came in here and I have the ability of going into the video.

I can come in here and edit as a text. So. I can cut different things, apply to different AI cuts from where it recommends.

I can do callouts. I can do blurs. So if I wanted to blur this, I could set a blur.

And when you play, look, now the blur is available. And again, this did it all. And I would say probably closer to 30 minutes or so.

And I added a lot more and I kept adding more. It could add lower thirds. So if you wanted to add like a lower third here at the bottom, and I believe the lower third, let's see what it does.

So I think it has Nuno Tavares. Look at that. So it creates a lower third, which is up the bottom.

I believe I can hit cut range and it removes a particular time. You see that? So I can cut and then I can also grab areas and move them.

Not bad for a first initial run, but look at that. I legit created my own. Video recording software where I can literally record any screen that I want, and it will actually preload the images based on this, the screen that I'm going to use.

And I can pick between my right screen, my left screen and doing whatever it is that I want. Think about what I was able to build just by doing all of this. This took a little bit longer because I had to build a backend.

It had to do a bunch of things. And what I want to do this time around though, is for the next one that we're going to do the next test, we're going to actually use lovable or base 44 or whatever code editing software. have that helps you build apps.

So then it can build the backend, the design. And then what I could do is later on, if I liked the way it designed it and built it, I can grab all of it and then bring it all the way down and have it ready for me to post in like a GitHub repo and a Vercel and actually launch it to cloud code and make it a full fledged app if I want it in there.

So for now, the next one we're going to do is if you look at what we've just built. So this is a GitHub repo that already exists and it also takes screenshots and does a bunch of other stuff, but what we're going to do. is come over here, we're going to right click it.

But this time, I'm just going to grab the URL, I'm going to go to my reverse engineering team right here. And I'm going to say the next tool we're going to do as a demo, what we're going to do is we're going to build it for lovable. But I want you to create a reverse engineering prompt that's going to reverse engineer this particular app, build it in lovable, and then make it applicable for us to use there.

Alright, so write me the prompt with everything that you know, in your reverse engineering, and then so I can give it to lovable. Now, Now, because it understands the whole entire concept, all I'm going to do is give it the link and then I'm going to wait for the prompt.

And then once we get the prompt, I'm going to go to lovable because it's going to build a backend. It's going to do all these different things. It's going to make it easier and it's going to build it all out.

Give it a graphic interface. figure all that entire part for me. And then what I'm going to do is I'm just going to go ahead and use it here.

And we're going to use that as a proof of concept because it did take a little bit of a long time to build a screen recorder software. So this time, I want to cut the time in half by building a lovable and then remember, anytime you build something lovable, it creates a GitHub repo, you can just take that repo, download it to your PC, and then have it built in cloud code and make it a little bit more elaborate.

So we're going to give it a second to get the actual prompt. Once we get the actual prompt, we're going to come back in here. All right, and look at this thing.

thing came up with a beautiful prompt. So what we're going to do is we're going to grab it right here. It's reversed engineer this particular program that we just grabbed again, I'll create a little guide so you guys have it.

Here it is right here. And I'm going to let it start building. And again, what we're going to do is once this thing starts building, we're going to give it a little bit of time.

It will build the front end, the back end, and it'll give us a more clear picture. It'll do it in a much quicker fashion because that's what Loveable is designed to do is build apps. So then we'll come back to this.

And then once we see it, then we'll move on to the next one. Then you guys can see what you can build once you have the reverse engineer. And what I will tell you is if there's other parts of other tools that you like, call them out and tell them what features you want to bring in and give them.

screenshots and let it reverse engineer and go do the research on it. And then look at all the backend code to really identify how it did it. So then it can, can bring, bring it back for you.

So then it can have it. All right. And there you have it just created this thing too.

So it's called leverage snap. It's doing everything to leverage because the leverage is cool. So leverage snap takes a screenshot, lets you add arrows, boxes, numbered steps, and blur in a few seconds, then copies it straight into your doc ticket or chat.

So it's just a free snapshot tool and then capture the screen. I'm going to say the entire screen. And we'll just do the same one.

I'll hit share. And then I could take a little screenshot of this. All right, there we go.

And then based on that, click on that opening. Great. And then in here, circle, little arrow, you know, you can do the image, torn edges.

Look at that. Pretty cool. Right off the bat, somebody else made this.

I can highlight something. I can write a little description. Look at that, numbered lists.

That's amazing. That's pretty freaking cool. Circle.

I mean, you can go crazy. You can download it, copy it, share it. And again, all I have to do is publish this.

This is why I liked using this because it was able to immediately do this. And on top of it, I believe if I'm not mistaken, it also created a little how it works. So there's even shortcut keys and everything else.

So it built an entire fold app. Again, things you can do reverse engineer. It wasn't my idea here.

So we're going to do one more app. So you kind of get the feel of it, but then you can go out there and you can build whatever you want here. So built this.

We can blur it out. We can do all this, make it a lot of fun. Now, this one right here is pretty cool.

So open whisper for alternative. You guys know that I use whisper flow. If you guys want it to basically build your own, here you go.

You can build it off of this. This is going to probably take a little bit of a hot minute, but it's going to be the same thing. I'm going to grab the GitHub repo.

And again, you just talk about the software you want to mimic and then come over here. Go to our reverse engineering lab and I'm going to go ahead and let's create a prompt for lovable where we're going to create a version of this. Mine is I want to make sure that it works on my computer and I also want to use it to dictate and to transcribe meetings in different situations, right?

In Zoom and other meetings that I'm being hosted by other people and I want it to live on my computer so it can record everything. I also want it to be able to clear up any transcriptions or separate. who the user is, if they can, when it's listening to the voice, and then build out all the other infrastructure that this tool offers.

Paste it, and then it's gonna give me the prompt again for lovable, and then we're gonna take the lovable prompt, build out the software, and then go from there. All right, so got my prompt, and here we go. And now we're gonna give it a few seconds, and it'll build something out, and then we'll go from there.

Whole goal, and I hope you're seeing this, is that you can take your favorite software. Now, what I like to do is... There's things that certain softwares do that I kind of want to bring in that I don't want to keep using because it's like, it's only one thing that it does.

Sometimes I want to incorporate it. Like my video editor, again, will post, create my thumbnails, do all that. That's what I've been building.

And again, yours might be a little bit different, right? Build and start taking features of the things you really like, and then just kind of make your own thing and build it from there. And then we're going to take this.

We're going to see how it does. And then we're going to go from there. All right.

So here we go. Right. So we call it leverage, listen, talk instead of type.

Remember how the tool works. You talk. It works out who said what, it tides the words, you get the notes, press record, import the file, wait two minutes, name the speakers, work on the actions, items, export and share.

Sure, whatever, right? So we're going to try it now and let's see what happens. Allow to visit the site.

Hey, just checking in and I want to make sure you're able to do this. So we're just doing a quick little test and we'll go from here. Now, the only thing about this is right, Whisperflow works on my computer.

So eventually this will be. something that we would then transcribe and push it down. And then we would have the same exact thing and then build it off of there.

Hey, just checking in. I want to make sure you're able to brings it down immediately. Again, we just did it.

We have open source. You can build this directly on your PC and it can be coming the next invitation while you're doing whatever it is that you're doing, but just going to show you how you can do a lot of these apps and build it directly. And again, I was using lovable because it's just creates a backend and everything else, but you saw me build it with, you know, my video.

editor inside of Claude. So you can build Codex, Claude, Grok, whatever you want, but just now having this reverse engineering skill in an entire team that can look to the inner workings, and then you can start pulling all this information in. So hopefully this helps you get to play around with this pretty cool tool.

And with that being said, we'll see you in the next one.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

The video opens on the finished result, a screen recorder the presenter built himself, then promises to install the repo that made it and run it on three free GitHub apps.

Frameworks