Reverse-engineering is cheap now

Main idea

Coding agents have radically changed the economics of reverse engineering: projects that previously required dozens of hours of manual work (reverse engineering a protocol, writing a client library, maintaining an undocumented integration) are now achievable in hours with AI assistance.

Context

Willison regularly blogs about the practical consequences of LLMs for developers. This post responds to a personal experience reverse-engineering a home device and is part of a series of observations about how AI is changing the economics of small software projects.

Why it matters

For developers and security researchers, this shifts the practicality threshold: projects with unclear ROI (IoT devices, unofficial API integrations, legacy format parsers) are now much more pragmatic. It also changes the security landscape — reverse engineering is more accessible to both researchers and attackers.

Details / arguments

• Previously: reverse engineering = dozens of hours, high cost, unclear ROI
• Now: AI agent reduces both initial coding cost and psychological barrier
• 'Psychological burden of maintaining undocumented integrations' also decreases with AI
• Practical applications: home devices, unofficial APIs, IoT devices, legacy protocols