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17,780 open-source tools that exist because someone reverse engineered a closed app, API, device, protocol, file format, game or AI product.
Search the index or give it to your agent: npx skills add alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineered
Agent skill · Categories · Hot this week · Add a project
Agents and tools like REA and Ghidra make reverse engineering faster than ever. Still, the app, API, device or file format you are about to open has often been done already, and the work sits in a repo nobody links to.
- Search first. Use the website or the agent skill. Search by product, vendor or protocol.
- Found it? Use it, fix it, and report breakage upstream. One maintained client beats ten private scripts.
- Not there? Do the work, publish it as open source, then add it here so the next person starts where you stopped.
17,780 projects with 12.2M GitHub stars between them: 10,171 active, 2,506 slowing down, 3,477 dormant, 1,169 archived. Top languages: Python (4,039), C++ (2,672), C (2,554), JavaScript (1,062), C# (962).
130 products their makers killed, kept alive by open-source projects built through reverse engineering.
| Product | Killed by | Year | Revived by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spotify Car Thing | Spotify | 2024 | DeskThing |
| Amazon Dash Button | Amazon | 2019 | node-dash-button |
| Nest Learning Thermostat (1st and 2nd gen) | 2025 | NoLongerEvil Thermostat | |
| AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) | AOL | 2017 | Open OSCAR Server (Retro AIM Server) |
| Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection (DS and Wii online) | Nintendo | 2014 | DWC Network Server Emulator |
| Pebble smartwatch | Fitbit | 2018 | mobile-app |
| ICQ | VK | 2024 | Open OSCAR Server (Retro AIM Server) |
| Neato robot vacuums | Neato Robotics / Vorwerk | 2025 | fang |
See all 130 on the Resurrected page →
When a task needs to talk to something with no official API (a smart plug, a car, a chat app, a file format), your agent searches this index, ranks by stars, activity and license, reads the README, and picks the right tool.
npx skills add alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineeredOther ways to install
Claude Code plugin
/plugin install reverse-engineered --marketplace alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineered
MCP server (Claude Desktop, Cursor, any MCP client)
claude mcp add reverse-engineered -- uvx --from "git+https://github.com/alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineered#subdirectory=mcp" reverse-engineered-mcp{"mcpServers": {"reverse-engineered": {"command": "uvx", "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineered#subdirectory=mcp", "reverse-engineered-mcp"]}}}Any agent or shell (one file, Python standard library only)
curl -sL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineered/main/plugin/skills/find-reverse-engineered/scripts/re_index.py -o re_index.py
python3 re_index.py search tuya local # ranked matches
python3 re_index.py info make-all/tuya-local # entry + README excerpt
python3 re_index.py clone make-all/tuya-local # shallow clone into vendor/
Real output of the skill on the current data.
Filter 17,780 projects by category, language and health, sorted by stars or recent activity. Every search has a shareable link.
The most-starred projects with commits in the last 7 days.
| Project | What it does | ★ | Health | Lang |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| rea | Agentic tool to reverse engineer apps from behavior down to native binaries | 388,702 | 🟢 | TypeScript |
| yt-dlp | A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader | 202,396 | 🟢 | Python |
| claw-code | Clean-room Rust/Python rewrite of the Claude Code agent harness after the source leak | 194,985 | 🟢 | Rust |
| Ghidra | NSA's software reverse engineering framework with decompiler | 94,509 | 🟢 | Java |
| PhotoCraft | Clean-room Photoshop-style photo editor written from scratch in pure Rust | 73,140 | 🟢 | Rust |
| system_prompts_leaks | Archive of extracted system prompts from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and others, per vendor with history | 70,245 | 🟢 | Python |
| vaultwarden | Unofficial Bitwarden-compatible server written in Rust | 69,700 | 🟢 | Rust |
| gpt4free | Reverse-engineered third-party provider APIs giving free access to GPT-4 and other LLMs | 66,934 | 🟢 | Python |
| FFmpeg | Multimedia framework with many reverse-engineered proprietary codecs and containers | 65,783 | 🟢 | C |
| openpilot | Open-source driver assistance system for 300+ car models | 63,998 | 🟢 | Python |
| Project | What it does | ★ | Health | Lang |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RSSHub | RSS feed generator that scrapes hundreds of sites and apps, many via unofficial APIs | 46,673 | 🟢 | TypeScript |
| RevokeMsgPatcher | Binary patcher that blocks message recall in desktop WeChat, QQ and TIM | 39,033 | 🟢 | C# |
| lux | Go video download library and CLI for Bilibili, Douyin, YouTube and many other sites | 31,808 | 🟢 | Go |
| MobSF | Static and dynamic analysis framework for Android and iOS app packages | 22,041 | 🟢 | Python |
| res-downloader | Proxy-based downloader for WeChat Channels, mini programs, Douyin, Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu media | 20,881 | 🟢 | Go |
| AlgerMusicPlayer | Third-party desktop music player built on the NetEase Cloud Music API | 17,109 | 🟢 | Vue |
| YoutubeDownloader | Desktop app that downloads YouTube videos and playlists via YouTube's internal API | 16,534 | 🟢 | C# |
| LunaTranslator | Visual novel translator that hooks game text from running Windows games | 13,905 | 🟢 | C++ |
| wechat-article-exporter | Online batch exporter for WeChat Official Account articles with read and comment data | 13,102 | 🟢 | TypeScript |
| MiGPT | Connects Xiaomi XiaoAI smart speakers to ChatGPT and Doubao via the Mi cloud API | 12,496 | 🗄️ | TypeScript |
| douyin-downloader | Douyin video downloader for single posts and whole profiles | 12,450 | 🟢 | Python |
| Corkami pics | Visual dissections and posters of binary file formats | 11,502 | 🟡 | Assembly |
| wx_channels_download | Downloader for WeChat Channels (Shipinhao) videos | 10,150 | 🟢 | Go |
| musicbox | Command-line client for NetEase Cloud Music | 9,864 | 🟢 | Python |
| wewe-rss | Self-hosted RSS feeds for WeChat Official Accounts via the WeChat Read API | 9,635 | 🗄️ | TypeScript |
| # | Project | What it does | ★ | Health | Lang |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | rea | Agentic tool to reverse engineer apps from behavior down to native binaries | 388,702 | 🟢 | TypeScript |
| 2 | yt-dlp | A feature-rich command-line audio/video downloader | 202,396 | 🟢 | Python |
| 3 | claw-code | Clean-room Rust/Python rewrite of the Claude Code agent harness after the source leak | 194,985 | 🟢 | Rust |
| 4 | system-prompts-and-models-of-ai-tools | Extracted system prompts and tool definitions for Cursor, Claude Code, Devin, Windsurf, Kiro, v0, Lovable and more | 144,268 | 🟢 | |
| 5 | youtube-dl | Command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites | 141,399 | 🟢 | Python |
| 6 | Ghidra | NSA's software reverse engineering framework with decompiler | 94,509 | 🟢 | Java |
| 7 | PhotoCraft | Clean-room Photoshop-style photo editor written from scratch in pure Rust | 73,140 | 🟢 | Rust |
| 8 | system_prompts_leaks | Archive of extracted system prompts from ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and others, per vendor with history | 70,245 | 🟢 | Python |
| 9 | vaultwarden | Unofficial Bitwarden-compatible server written in Rust | 69,700 | 🟢 | Rust |
| 10 | MediaCrawler | Crawler for Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Bilibili and Weibo posts and comments | 68,638 | 🟢 | Python |
| 11 | gpt4free | Reverse-engineered third-party provider APIs giving free access to GPT-4 and other LLMs | 66,934 | 🟢 | Python |
| 12 | FFmpeg | Multimedia framework with many reverse-engineered proprietary codecs and containers | 65,783 | 🟢 | C |
| 13 | openpilot | Open-source driver assistance system for 300+ car models | 63,998 | 🟢 | Python |
| 14 | CLIProxyAPI | Wraps Codex, Claude Code, Antigravity, Grok and Gemini CLI OAuth backends as OpenAI/Claude-compatible APIs | 56,326 | 🟢 | Go |
| 15 | ImHex | Hex editor for reverse engineers with a pattern language for binary formats | 55,574 | 🟢 | C++ |
| 16 | lx-music-desktop | LX Music: desktop music player aggregating Chinese music platform sources | 54,786 | 🟢 | TypeScript |
| 17 | CL4R1T4S | Leaked system prompts and tool specs for ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity, Cursor, Lovable, Replit and others | 51,514 | 🟢 | |
| 18 | jadx | Dex to Java decompiler for Android apps | 51,277 | 🟢 | Java |
| 19 | alist | AList: file list and WebDAV server that mounts many cloud drives through their private APIs | 50,367 | 🟢 | Go |
| 20 | Spotube | Cross-platform Spotify client that streams audio from other sources | 50,347 | 🟢 | Kotlin |
| 21 | x64dbg | Open source user-mode debugger for Windows | 50,025 | 🟢 | C++ |
| 22 | RSSHub | RSS feed generator that scrapes hundreds of sites and apps, many via unofficial APIs | 46,673 | 🟢 | TypeScript |
| 23 | mitmproxy | Interactive TLS-capable intercepting HTTP proxy | 46,361 | 🟢 | Python |
| 24 | sub2api | Relay that exposes Claude, OpenAI, Gemini and Grok subscriptions as unified APIs | 44,863 | 🟢 | Go |
| 25 | Sunshine | Self-hosted game stream host that implements the NVIDIA GameStream protocol for Moonlight clients | 42,651 | 🟢 | C++ |
| Meaning | |
|---|---|
| 🟢 | Active: pushed in the last 12 months |
| 🟡 | Slowing: last push 1 to 3 years ago |
| 🔴 | Dormant: no push for over 3 years |
| 🗄️ | Archived by its owner |
| ⚪ | Unknown: not hosted on GitHub |
Unofficial APIs break when the vendor changes their side, so check health before you depend on a project.
flowchart LR
A[Research agents<br/>GitHub, HN, Reddit,<br/>awesome-lists] --> B[Scope filter<br/>interoperability only]
B --> C[GitHub API check<br/>exists, stars, license]
C --> D[(data/entries.json)]
D --> E[README and<br/>category pages]
D --> F[Search website]
D --> G[Agent skill]
H[Nightly refresh<br/>GitHub Action] -->|stars, archived,<br/>dead links| D
Raw data: data/entries.json. Removed repos: data/removed.json. Imported lists and searches: SOURCES.md.
| 3,420 | searches across GitHub, Hacker News, Reddit and the web |
| 351 | existing lists and collections imported |
| 202 | repos dropped by the scope filter (exploits, jailbreaks, bypasses, DRM, cheats). Research agents also skip these before this step. |
| 17,780 | repos in the index, each checked against the GitHub API (exists, canonical URL, stars, license) |
| 1,169 | archived by their owners: kept and marked 🗄️ |
| 53 | removed by the nightly check because the repo was deleted or made private (list) |
This index lists interoperability, preservation and research projects: unofficial clients and SDKs, open drivers, local-control libraries, file-format parsers, protocol documentation, reimplementations and decompilations. Reverse engineering for interoperability is protected in many places (for example 17 U.S.C. §1201(f) and Article 6 of the EU Software Directive).
Left out on purpose: exploits and jailbreaks, security or certificate-pinning bypasses, decryption tools, cheats, DRM or paywall removal, CAPTCHA solvers, account bots and credential tools.
Using an unofficial client can break a service's terms of use. Use these projects with your own accounts, devices and data.
Know a project that belongs here? Open an issue with the repo link and one line on what it reverse engineers, or send a PR that adds it to data/entries.json. Wrong category, dead link, or out of scope? Open an issue too.
Curated by @alexgaoth with research agents. Every entry is checked against the GitHub API.
Add this badge to your README. On the website, each project has a badge button that copies a version linking to its own entry.
[](https://github.com/alexgaoth/awesome-reverse-engineered)Code (scripts, website, agent skill): MIT. The list and data: CC0 1.0. Each linked project has its own license.
If this saved you from reverse engineering something yourself, give it a star.