Everything is Open Source Now (Reverse Engineer Anything)

Author: Better Stack · 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: Everything is Open Source Now (Reverse Engineer Anything) · Channel: Better Stack · 04:16 · Watch on YouTube

Topics: AI agents, Cybersecurity and software security, Software engineering with AI, AI models, Open source and software ecosystems

Summary

The video explores how AI agents and reverse-engineering tools are making it easier to recreate closed-source software. It discusses Arc Craft, a set of Adobe-like apps built through clean-room rewrites, while noting their current limitations and incomplete feature parity. The presenter also describes using an AI agent to rebuild the Space Cadet Pinball game in Rust, then considers the legal and practical implications of software becoming easier to clone. The video concludes that verifiable code is especially suited to agent-driven development and that this shift could enable more personal software.

Key points

Arc Craft offers open-source alternatives to Adobe apps, including Photo Craft, Vector Craft, and Film Craft.
Its developer says the apps are clean-room rewrites based on public specifications and observed behavior, without Adobe code, shaders, or assets.
Early users reported serious functionality problems, and the project’s roadmap says Photoshop parity is still well below 50%.
The GitHub project Reverse Engineer Anything connects AI agents to tools such as Hopper, Ghidra, and IDA.
The tool is presented as capable of analyzing native binaries, Electron and .NET apps, Android APKs, and websites.
The presenter used Opus to reverse engineer Space Cadet Pinball and recreate it in Rust for Mac, with the work divided among 15 sub-agents.
The resulting game reportedly contained 31,000 lines of Rust, 174 tests, and zero dependencies, and took 2 hours and 25 minutes to build.
The presenter argues that agents can recreate much software when they can inspect its behavior or verify their output against tests.
The video notes that some open-source projects may make tests private, but questions whether this will be an effective defense.
The presenter sees the trend as an opportunity to build personal software tailored to individual needs.

Chapters

Start	Chapter	Summary
00:00	Open-source Adobe-style apps	The video introduces Arc Craft and its clean-room approach to recreating Adobe-like applications.
01:05	Early reactions and feature parity	Users report basic functionality problems, while the project’s roadmap acknowledges that Photoshop parity remains limited.
01:38	Reverse engineering with AI agents	The video presents a GitHub tool that connects agents to reverse-engineering software and describes an agent rebuilding Space Cadet Pinball in Rust.
03:15	What software cloning means	The presenter considers how cheap code generation and testable behavior may make closed software easier to recreate, and reflects on the appeal of personal software.

Quotes

Pretty soon, all software will be de facto open source. — 00:00

real Photoshop parity is still well below 50% — 01:38

See a feature you like, understand how it works down to the binary level — 02:10

Agents have just made code incredibly cheap — 03:15

I just care that they work for me. — 04:16

Concepts and entities

Arc Craft, Brandon, PhotoCraft, Vector Craft, Film Craft, Adobe, Reverse Engineer Anything, Hopper, Ghidra, IDA, Opus 5.5, Pinball Space Cadet, Rust, Next.js, Theo, TypeScript

Full transcript (original language)

00:00 Photoshop and most of the Adobe suite went open source this week, but not from Adobe. And right now, the top trending repo on GitHub is a tool that lets your agent reverse engineer any app. Pretty soon, all software will be de facto open source. Let’s talk about that. So, the project that went viral this week is called Arc Craft from a developer named Brandon, and in there you’ll find Photo Craft, Vector Craft, Film Craft, and pretty much all of the Adobe apps, but open source. Brandon’s reason for doing this is extremely relatable to anyone that’s used Adobe.

00:32 He says he got bit by the dark pattern cancellation fee one too many times. I mean, I myself have paid that cancellation price. But, how did they actually make these apps? Well, according to him, these are clean room rewrites. He says he built them from the public specs and watching how the apps work with no Adobe code, shaders, or assets. The PSD support, for example, is written from Adobe’s public file spec and tested against real files. If you look through the apps, though, you can definitely see that it’s all some screenshots of Adobe. It’s proper copying their homework and just changing the name. So, hopefully the Adobe lawyers don’t get in contact. Regardless

01:05 of legal issues, though, he started posting these online and they went immediately viral, getting loads of likes and people celebrating Adobe’s downfall, but then people actually tried the apps. One person on Hacker News, who’s worked in design and film, opened a few simple layout projects and said literally nothing works. The text selector was offset from the cursor, the font size slider didn’t change anything, the shortcut keys did nothing, and folders wouldn’t collapse. In their words, this is actual joke software. That is some pretty harsh words, but in Photo Craft’s defense, their roadmap says as much. It has a section called honesty parity assessment, and it says

01:38 real Photoshop parity is still well below 50%, but the 99% parity will take a while, but it’ll probably be measured in months and not years. Don’t wait that long to subscribe, by the way. I can see that 80% of you watching this aren’t subscribed, so help us out and click that subscribe button. So, if we believe what Brandon’s saying here, Arc Craft was rebuilt from the outside using the specs and the behavior, but now let’s take a look at that number trending repo on GitHub. It’s called reverse engineer anything. See a feature you like, understand how it works down to the binary level, aka just steal it. It’s actually just an MCP that connects your agents to popular reverse engineering

02:10 tools like Hopper, Ghidra, and IDA with some skills on top to help them out. This means that it can handle native binaries, Electron apps, .NET apps, Android APKs, websites, and basically anything that you throw at it. All you have to do is ask something like understand how search works in the notes app, show me the evidence, and build feature for my project. They actually have showcases of using this to copy Notion’s clipboard feature and rebuilding a sound from an old game in C. I actually wanted to try this out myself, but I must admit I didn’t want to install all of the tools and MCP servers that this one needed, but that should be fine because Opus is actually

02:43 pretty good at doing this on its own. All I did was take the Pinball Space Cadet game I loved as a kid, downloaded the EXE from Internet Archive, and I simply asked Opus 5.5 to reverse engineer it, build it in Rust, and make it work on my Mac. Opus got to work disassembling it by writing its own tools, and then it translated the game function by function, tagging every Rust function with the address that it came from, and it split this work across 15 sub-agents covering the physics, the flippers, and all 32 missions. 2 hours, 25 minutes later, I had 31,000 lines of Rust running natively on my Mac with 174

03:15 tests and zero dependencies. Then a fresh set of agents kicked off to check every single function against the original and found almost nothing to fix. All in all, this was done for roughly $140 at API prices, but I used my subscription and it barely made a dent in my usage. Obviously, this one was a pretty simple example, but it didn’t want it to take that long. But, the question is, is all software open source now? Well, kind of. With enough tokens and a disregard for the law, you can probably clone most software to some extent. Agents have just made code incredibly cheap, and then they can turn

03:45 basically every closed app into a spec because if the agent can watch it and inspect it, they can probably rebuild it. We’ve actually seen something similar with projects like the next which ported Next.js to V. If there’s a test suite that you can follow, the agent will just keep working and working until it passes, and we You this with Theo’s recent project where he ported the TypeScript compiler to Rust. The agents just kept going, supposedly spending over $420,000 on API costs, but they did get the job done. Agents are just incredibly good at writing code if that code can be verified, and that’s actually why some open source projects said they might

04:16 private their tests. Although with how far AI has come, I think that’s going to be a pretty useless measure now. Overall, this is definitely a weird world that we’re entering, but as someone who loves personal software, I do find it quite exciting. I’ve built so many apps that solve my pain points with other software or just clean up my workflow, and I don’t really care about that quality since I’m never going to make them public. I just care that they work for me. Let me know what you think about all of this in the comments down below or hit that subscribe, and as always, see you in the next one.