RIP Reverse Engineer Anything! This 8 KB Skill Outperforms REA (38% Faster)

RIP Reverse Engineer Anything! This 8 KB Skill Outperforms REA (38% Faster)

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In this video, I'll show you LeanREA, a single 8 KB skill file that I built to do the same job as REA (Reverse Engineer Anything) without an MCP server or any extra tools. I explain what REA is under the hood, then go through what is inside the skill: the rules, the router table that maps each target type to its fastest command, and the ready-to-run first moves. Then I show my benchmark in Claude Code with Sonnet 5.5 across 36 runs, where LeanREA was 38% faster and 35% cheaper than REA at the same accuracy, plus the context test and a tool-by-tool speed test. I also talk about the limits of the benchmark, two bugs I found in my own skill, and how to install it with one npx skills command.

-- Key Takeaways:

📦 LeanREA is one 8 KB skill file with no MCP server and no extra tools; the agent runs the real tools in its normal shell. 🔀 REA is an MCP server plus a CLI that adds 207 tools, and under the hood it mostly calls tools you already have, like asar, otool, nm and jadx. 🧠 The skill has a short list of rules, a router table for 15 target types, and first moves that do many checks in one shell call. 📊 In 36 graded runs, LeanREA took 388 seconds, no skill took 479 seconds and REA took 627 seconds. 💸 LeanREA cost $2.17 against $3.36 for REA, with 56% fewer turns and 60% fewer tokens, and scored 74/75 against REA's 75/75. ⚠️ With tool search turned off, one "reply with OK" message with REA used about 400k tokens and cost $1.60. ⚡ On the same file, REA's Go build info took about half a second, and plain go version -m took 0.06 seconds. 👍 The plain model with no skill was already very good, so the big win is against REA, not against the model alone. 🔍 Two bugs I found in my own skill: ripgrep skips hidden folders like .webpack (use -uu), and zsh breaks echo with two equal signs. ✅ My verdict: if you are a programmer, use the small skill, because it is faster, cheaper, and you can read all of it in two minutes.