How It Works
Reverse engineering
Working out how a finished piece of software or hardware works by studying it from the outside — its behavior, files or compiled code — rather than from its original source code or design documents. AI coding agents can now do much of this work, which lets people rebuild or inspect closed apps but also raises legal and security questions.
Origin
A long-standing engineering term, first used for analyzing hardware and later software. Tools such as the open-source REA project apply it to AI coding agents.
No single primary source link for this term.