I Tested the Viral Reverse Engineering Repo (What You Need to Know)

Author: Jack Roberts · Watch on YouTube

Video authored by the channel shown, not by IANIA; all rights belong to the creator. Transcript and summary generated automatically; the original-language content is preserved.

Original language: English

Original video: I Tested the Viral Reverse Engineering Repo (What You Need to Know) · Channel: Jack Roberts · 16:32 · Watch on YouTube

Topics: Task and workflow automation, Cybersecurity and software security, Software engineering with AI, AI governance and regulation

Summary

The video tests a reverse-engineering workflow that uses screenshots and prompts in Base44 to build alternatives to Calendly, Typeform, and Trello. The presenter demonstrates working core features such as booking, forms, results, cards, and team invitations, while noting that the first version may need further refinement. He argues that whether to build a replacement depends on the software’s complexity and the value of your time. He also emphasizes that recreating functionality is different from copying source code, images, logos, or paid features, and recommends building original products with their own branding.

Key points

The demonstrated workflow uses a screenshot and a prompt to generate an app in Base44, including backend setup and integrations.
The Calendly-style app supports availability settings, booking links, form validation, and email notifications; additional meeting-editing features can be prompted afterward.
The Typeform-style app allows users to create questions, share a public form, and review responses, with more features added through follow-up prompts.
The Trello-style app includes boards, movable cards, checklists, and the ability to invite another user.
The presenter describes these initial builds as covering core functionality, not necessarily every feature or detail of the original software.
Whether to build your own alternative depends on the complexity of the software and how much your time is worth.
The video cautions against copying code, images, logos, or paid features from existing products.
The recommended approach is to specify the desired functionality and use original branding with UI inspiration rather than asking AI to copy an app.

Chapters

Start	Chapter	Summary
00:00	Introducing the reverse-engineering workflow	The presenter introduces the viral tool, explains its basic approach, and outlines plans to test alternatives to three well-known apps.
02:05	Building a Calendly-style booking app	Using a screenshot and prompt in Base44, the presenter creates and tests an app with availability settings, bookings, and email notifications.
06:43	Recreating Typeform’s core features	The presenter builds a form app, tests question creation and sharing, and discusses the limits of a first-pass recreation.
12:23	Testing a Trello-style app	The generated app supports boards, cards, checklists, and team invitations, though some visual details need refinement.
13:58	What reverse engineering means in practice	The presenter weighs the cost of building versus subscribing and warns viewers to create original products rather than copy protected assets or code.
16:00	Build with original branding	The video closes by recommending feature-led prompts and original branding, then points viewers to a separate discussion of UI design.

Quotes

it is a fully functioning app — 04:40

it’s a question of depth and complexity. — 10:19

You can’t just copy and paste things from these apps and websites. — 14:28

you want to say, “Hey, I want you to build me an app that does A B C D E F G.” — 16:00

Concepts and entities

Reverse Engineering, Base44, Calendly, Typeform, Trello, Adobe, Jack Roberts

Full transcript (original language)

00:00 Reversing Engineering is a new viral app that can clone anything in minutes, saving you hundreds of dollars and making you more money. I spent hours testing this and in this video we’re going to build three apps worth billions of dollars in minutes. So you can see how to use it, what AI is actually capable of, and the biggest mistake that is holding most people back. So if you haven’t already, grab that beautiful coffee and let’s dive straight in. Now since Reverse Engineering has dropped, people have sent a great load of Kleenex tissues to Adobe HQ because they need

00:31 this. Since this has dropped guys, Photoshop, After Effects, Higgs Field, Halo, Dell, DX, Apple, Whisper Flow. It is blowing up on YouTube. It is blowing up on X because people are using AI to reverse engineer essentially any app. The question is how good is it really? Turns out it’s actually really good. I tested it on Photoshop and Premiere Pro, the alternatives of it. And guys, it is really impressive. Now, how does Ria actually work, which we need to know before we actually use it to build something. Effectively, it checks out the UI, it looks at the logic, and then

01:02 checks out the data, and using all of that, the idea is it can effectively recreate anything. This individual rebuilt Terraria in 3D. This guy right here replicated the entirety of Spider-Man. But it isn’t just games, the main interesting use case I think is software that you’re currently spending hundreds and hundreds of dollars for. Now the average person is spending around $219. Let’s see exactly if we can delete and remove the subscriptions. And we’re going to be doing this guys across three softwares worth uh billions of dollars. We’re going to do Calendly, Typeform, and Trello. And this is so easy to use.

01:34 We’re going to build the entire thing inside Base 44. So we’re going to have all the back end, all the integrations. Who’s also the sponsor of today’s video. So more on that later. So let’s go ahead and actually think about first of all what Ria is and how it works. Now I’ve used Ria. I’ve tested it and I found something quite controversial. Now after lots of testing, one of the interesting things I realized about Ria is that Ria itself is 420,000 lines of TypeScript and code. There are effectively 789 of them, which are pulled out specifically in this skill, which is all about the

02:05 reverse engineering process. And when you compare that with just doing it in Claude or ChatGPT, it ends up being faster. So, what I want you to do is come over here and grab this prompt. I’ll put it down below so you can go ahead and grab it. And then the first thing I’m going to do is head straight over to Base 44 because I’m using Base 44 because I can just give it a screenshot, a prompt, and it just auto connects all the back end and blah blah blah and sort everything else out for me without me needing to do anything else. Then, once I’ve done that, I want to go ahead and grab a screenshot of Calendly. So, I’ve got here you can see I can click on different buttons. And again, let’s see how well this can actually do.

02:37 Go ahead and rebuild this for us. So, come straight back over and drop the screenshot in. And then the only thing we need to do really is just give it a prompt. “Hey there, I want you to go ahead for me and recreate Calendly for me, the booking system, based on the screenshot. Give it a different name, but I want to have all of the core functionality. Thank you.” And once you’ve done that, you can go ahead and just go down and click on build. You can also a plan mode in Base 44 where you can plan it out a little bit more, which is handy, but this is going to use all its back end databases, everything else like that, and just do manage all that sort of stuff for us, which is fantastic. Now, the first thing that

03:07 happens while it’s building here, you can see it’s thinking. If it needs any clarification questions, it can just ask us. And guys, this is what we got back. So, I’m going to go ahead and publish this so we can go ahead and play around with it and check it out just so we can see it in a brand new window. Let’s go ahead and open this app up and test it out. Now, bear in mind, this is using those principles. Let’s see what we’ve got. I’m going to come down and open up the dashboard. And okay, we’ve got a random one here. Let’s go ahead and it’s even created a login section, which is fantastic. So, let’s go ahead and sign in with Google. Once I’ve signed in, we’re going to come down and open our dashboard here. Now, the cool thing

03:37 about doing something like this on Base 44 is all the back end already auto configured so we can rock and roll. And let’s have a look at what we’re dealing with here, guys. And I’m giving my honest, raw, candid thoughts. First thing I’ve got here is availability on the right hand side. I can pick this based on the day, click it, toggle it off and on. Pretty decent. Let’s go say I don’t want to work Fridays, or Tuesdays, or Thursdays, or even Wednesdays. I’m just working actually I’ll work Mondays and Sundays. How about that? And I’ll let people book in for 15 minutes. Bear in mind, I’ve done this is complete one shot by the way. Come down, click on save hours, which is fantastic.

04:09 I can check out my 15-minute meeting link. I can click this. And guys, this is actually outrageous. Okay, let’s go back one second. Let’s add some different things in here. And let’s save my hours. And let’s take a look at this. And let’s then compare them with what we have here. So, this is typical Calendly. This is ours. If I click on it, what do I see? This is pretty outrageous. We have officially entered the era where you can pretty much clone anything you want to. Click on next, name email, enter some stuff there, enter some stuff there. Well,

04:40 Base44 has even added pre-validation, which is pretty cool. We’ll give it a fake one here. Confirm that booking. Okay, great. And now it’s done. I can go ahead and book another time and come back. And you’re not actually going to believe this, but it already auto-configured the email to me. So, it is a fully functioning app that not only has allowed me to recreate the entire interface, but has an actual dynamic booking system based on the Google account that I just created. I am genuinely really impressed with that. I genuinely did not expect to have all those features live just from one prompt. Now, this has locked down the

05:11 core functionality, but if you come back to Base44, there’s a few other things that you can do like edit. So, I wonder if it would let us to go ahead and do that. I can check my availability. I can manage it, but there’s no editing section. So, what we’d really need to do is go back over to Base44, and then I can give a prompt like, “Hey there, I would really like the ability to edit the information on my own individual meetings and edit that so I had like emojis and basically dictate questions as and when they set those up, please.” I’m just drop that in the question bar on the left. And then you just go back and forth to build these out. Now, you can effectively list all the

05:42 requirements if you want to. An ounce of preview is worth a pound in post. And whilst it’s is away in the background, I can even copy the link of my meeting and let’s put this into a brand new browser and see what it does. I do this. This is now something I can share with people to go ahead and book. We have literally cloned the core features and anything else that’s missing, we can go ahead and change. Now, this comes with an important caveat, which I’m going to get to in this video. I want to make sure that you understand this. And just like that, it’s gone ahead and made the edits. I then open it up and now I have an edit button. I can click on that. I can add a description. I can add emoji. I can do, “Hey there, how’s it going?” I

06:12 can add questions like, you know, “What is your annual revenue?” Whatever the thing is, make that a required question. Type that as a saved meeting. Awesome. And then if I just open up that link, as you can see now, “Hey there, we and I say they want to come down and book a meeting.” Like so, click on next. “What is your annual revenue?” And again, we get all this information emailed to us. This can save you $10 to $20 instantaneously. Now, this all sounds like I’m speaking Spanish. I’m going to put a link down below for my full Claude Agenceek masterclass that takes you from complete beginner to mastering things like this, building beautiful websites, memory systems, how to build apps,

06:43 everything you need to know as well as full access to my Agenceek operating systems, my memory systems, how you connect all these apps together into one beautiful system to get you light-years ahead of everybody else. I’ll put a link down below so you can use that and absolutely crush it. Now, we’ve covered essentially how to build with Calendly and its core features. The next test that I’m really curious to see if you can hit actually is effectively going to be Typeform. Now, Typeform’s great because we need to use forms for lots of stuff, right? It’s a subscription that I’ve had for ages. I recommended and played around with things like Paperform and Typeform. This one can be a little

07:15 bit more tricky. So, I’m really curious to see what can we actually do with this one. So, here we’ve got Typeform, so we can play around, use this template as it for instance and have a little play around with what that looks like. I’ll sign up and show you it exactly. And to build it once again, we’re going to come down here and just copy everything from this Notion document. And again, I’ll put a link down below for both 44, so you can click this and build along with me, test this on a real thing. See if you can do it. Pick any app that you’re paying for right now and let’s see if you can build it right now using one prompt. Again, I paste this in. I come up. I say, “Hey, I want you to go ahead and build for me, please,

07:46 this version of Typeform. I’m going to attach a screenshot. See if you can recreate the functionality. Give me the ability to create forms so I I can cancel my subscription and no longer have to pay for it. Of course, give it a different name other than Typeform and make it a little bit different in that sense.” All right, guys. So, this is Typeform. I don’t like that mocha background, personally, but you can see it works, right? I’ve got things on the left. Tell us about yourself. These are different questions that we’re asking, which is cool. Um you know, it’s okay. I mean, it’s it’s all right. I mean, this is Typeform, right? It’s a freaking very, very successful business, but you essentially get the idea. You can go

08:17 ahead and build these type of things into it. Now, let’s see what Base44 did. I’m going to open this one up here and look at this, guys. Now, let’s go ahead and publish this so we can check it out. What is really cool is I can just make this private cuz I don’t want to go out to the public. I can just go to scan. Don’t need to do that right now. Obviously, we can pick do you want it to be a mobile app? You know, again, lots of different things. What is cool if we want to just create our own unique domain to make it feel professional, that’s a really cool thing that we can do. Now, look at this. This is called Ask instead of Typeform. To be honest, guys, pretty sleek interface. Get started. Let’s go and sign up with a

08:47 Google. Now, immediately, one of the cool things that I’m finding out with the using Base44 is I’m not having to do any additional plumbing. I’m not having to think about databases or things in the background. It is a blessing in that sense. It does manage all of that because classically it’s been a real pain in the backside having to like link at the email and like decide who can configure the fact it can do it all is really helpful. Now, I’ve got this welcome stream and this is on title form. So, let’s begin. So, we’ll call this one the giant coffee questioner. I’ve got a welcome message and we’re just going to say, “Hey.” Now, let’s go ahead and begin. I’m going to add a question. So, multiple choice. Multiple choice, great. I don’t know. How many

09:19 coffees do you drink every day? All right, whatever the thing is. Come down. Option one could be, I don’t know, zero. And then we could have maybe one. But you get the idea here, guys. Just come down. Two. So on and so and so forth. We can have short text, which is like ABC. Again, we’ll just close one down here. Blah, blah, blah. And then a rating one to 10. whatever it is, how cool is coffee? How cool is coffee? Bam, whatever it is. Let’s save, done. I can move these up and down. Fantastic. If I want to share this, I click on the share button. Public link is copied, so let’s

09:49 see if this is actually true. I click on this like so. I open it up, the giant coffee questionnaire. I can begin like so. How many coffees do I drink? I drink more than three, but you get the idea. ABC ABC. How cool is coffee? It’s an eight out of 10. And just like that, all done, thank you. So you get the idea that we’ve basically gone ahead and recreate today form interface. And then I can come down to the results and immediately see all of the results. This is mind-blowing to me cuz you can spend $400 easily on form things. And the fact I can just have these up now, share one link, publish it in one prompt, and be ready to go as well. But this does bring

10:19 me to one of the first points I want to call out with this guys. And that’s the fact that as with all wise, it’s a question of depth and complexity. Now, I’ve recreated what I would probably consider to be the 80%. The core things that it needs to do. It needs to let me be able to build questions, um change the the kind of content category of those questions, and then collect results and share it with people. I’d say that’s like 80%. Obviously, when you come over to the website itself, you can see there’s more to it. There’s a design section. There

10:51 is mobile optimized. You can play, you can do all these things. Now guys, I’m one prompt away from adding all that stuff in. So that’s my point to you. It’s just a question of how many minutes can you wait before you get it? But all this stuff guys, we could add in so easily. Like, I don’t know, let’s say for example that you wanted to create a preview mode. Let me show you how easy that is. Come down. Hey there, go ahead and add for me a preview mode. And add me one further question type. And the point that I’m really making here guys is that you are essentially limited only to your imagination. We’re officially in the era of the designer. If you can

11:22 think it, if you can say it, you can build it. This is the golden era for building anything. I genuinely, genuinely, genuinely believe that. There is chaos, and in chaos there is opportunity. What do they say? Chaos is a ladder. Now, I know that a lot of people are going to think that, you know, all the IP lawyers are going to have the biggest bonuses of their life this year because all these companies are like, “What the hell is actually going on?” Everybody’s building this incredible software. I’m going to talk about that in a second. You need to listen to this. The point I’m making here is if you can imagine it, you can actually build it with the right

11:52 prompts, with the right systems. We’re no longer limited by effectively having to know how to code, you know, being trapped in a room with a Windows laptop with 16 Red Bulls. It isn’t required anymore. We can yap to AI and it can build things. And now, guys, as you can see, it’s now added a further one, which is a yes/no question. And on top of that, I can now go ahead and preview by pressing play. All it needs is references and what you need. Which leads on to the third level, which is going to be Trello. Now, Trello is a beautiful one. It’s a very, very highly valued company. And you can see how Trello works here. Look at this. You can

12:23 grab things, bring them over, have a play around with them, click into them, see different things. As you can imagine, all we’re going to do is strip back over to our Notion document, copy everything like so, then head over to Base 44. Now, this is exactly what it went ahead built. This one is pretty wild as well. Let me show you what I mean so you can compare them side by side here. We’ve got lanes right here. Again, we’ll sign in with Google. Now, being frank, it is handy just that Google does a sign up like that. Let’s click on this demo board, for example, and look at this. This is pretty crazy. I think it’s actually weirdly kind of It’s funny to me. It’s like, “Okay, it’s been told, ’Hey, there’s green leaves in

12:54 the background. Go and copy that.’” And then it’s kind of done, “I’ll do I’ll do some green leaves. I’ll do that. No problem.” So, I can move things around pretty easily. I can add cards like, “Hey, pet Dexter.” He’s my beautiful English Springer Spaniel. And I’ve got that right now. I can add a cover. Let’s add this cover here. Um make sure Dexter gets pets every single day. Now, this has been stretched a little too far, in my opinion. But you There’s going to be little things you need to play around with, right? We’re not quite at the era of one shot everything. But we’re getting ever closer every single time. So, happy with that. Checklist is cool. Add an item. Um is he

13:26 smiling? {question mark. Perfect. Come down. There’s no save button. I’m assuming if I click off that’ll be fine. As you can see it’s right there and I can move it from doing done. I now have a full app which is fantastic. Can I invite my team if I click this invite link over here? I can, which is great. So add in hey at In fact, I’ll leave it at my email address here. So I’ve just gone ahead and invited myself here. Let’s see if something pops up. You guys believe it or not, I now have an invite from Lanes to go and join as a user. So let’s open this one up. I open it up and would you believe it, I’m now in and there’s two individuals and we now have an app. Great. Rock and roll. But this does bring me on to one of the big

13:58 things that we have to talk about with this reverse engineering process and what this means. Look at this really furniture clicking that kind of logo changes. I think that’s really cool. But let’s talk about what this all means and why this is so important. Now it got pretty close on one shot. Now listen what we’ve done. We’ve done front end, we’ve done back end, we’ve done database, we’ve done logins, we’ve done hosting and if we wanted to we’ve done payments in one app and one one kind of prompt. I think that’s pretty cool and we’ve demonstrated just how powerful this is using this strategy. We’ve talked about looking as a user, writing down what it does, building it from scratch and then making it yourself. But

14:28 there’s one thing that you don’t want to do. You don’t copy their code, you don’t copy their images, you don’t copy their logo and necessarily the paid features. So there’s a big difference between taking inspiration from something and just copy and pasting it. You can’t just copy and paste things from these apps and websites. So then the question becomes when should I build something myself versus paying for it? Usually speaking now because AI is getting cheaper and more effective, it is sometimes more economical to build your own version of something rather than pay. But not always. It depends on two

14:58 factors. One is how complex is the software that you’re looking at and how hard is it to replace, number one. And the second one is how much is your time worth? So for example, if it’s an app that you’re spending $200 a month on, $1,000 a month on and AI can replicate it for you in a day or two’s work, I’m not even replicate but just, you know, build a better version of it yourself, then that’s something that’s quite interesting, right? Whereas like if it’s something that you’re spending 20, 30, $100 on a month, but say for example it’s a lot cheaper and it will take a lot of time to reverse engineer. Bear in

15:29 mind you don’t have a team of experts building and developing at the same time. These are tradeoffs that you have to think about. And increasingly now guys, with the level of where AI is at, it’s becoming more economical and more compelling for people to build their own software. Hence why I think Adobe has been extremely alarmed and people are now saying that IP as a moat no longer exists. Now the key thing to reinforce is you can’t copy people’s apps. You can’t copy the source code. You can’t copy their images or even they just like scrape and just steal it yourself. You

16:00 want to be building things originally. So the best way I find person to do this is understand what the functionality is of a certain thing. Like what is the thing that you want to do? And then go ahead and build it with your own unique brand identity. So for example, the stuff that you build, you don’t just want to hand it something and say go and copy it. Realistically, you want to say, “Hey, I want you to build me an app that does A B C D E F G.” Give it a feature list and then give it some beautiful UI inspiration and then that will take you to a completely new level. But then it does bring us on to one final question.

16:32 And that’s how do you actually get beautiful UI that does look gorgeous and does turn views into buyers? Well, it just so happens I covered all of that in detail with stuff I’ve never seen discussed anywhere else inside this video right here. Grab that coffee. I’ll catch you over there.