Getting Started

Assist is new in the IDA 9.5 beta, and its documentation is subject to change. Treat it as a work in progress rather than a finished reference.

Get up and running with Assist: an AI harness for reverse engineering, built directly into IDA.

This tutorial walks you through installation and first setup. Once installed, you can invoke it with Ctrl+Shift+K, from the Edit → Plugins → Assist, or from the right-click context menu on a selection, when available.

Prerequisites

IDA 9.3, 9.4 or 9.5 (IDA Home, IDA Pro)
A Hex-Rays account with access to Assist
hcli, the Hex-Rays command-line tool (recommended)

Installation

Recommended: install with hcli

hcli installs Assist from the Hex-Rays plugin portal and keeps it up to date.

Install hcli. Follow the hcli installation guide.
Log in to your Hex-Rays account. Assist can only be downloaded by accounts that have access to it, so hcli must be logged in before it can install Assist:
```
hcli login
```
Install Assist:
```
hcli plugin install hexrays/assist
```
hcli installs Assist in your IDA user plugins directory ($IDAUSR/plugins/assist/), not in the IDA installation folder.
Restart IDA.

Update Assist

Assist checks the plugin portal and shows a notice when a newer release is out. To update, run the following command, then restart IDA:

hcli plugin upgrade hexrays/assist

hcli plugin status shows the installed version and whether an upgrade is available.

Alternative: install manually

Download the Assist archive for your platform from the My Hex-Rays portal.
Extract it and copy the contents of its plugins folder into your IDA user plugins directory:
- macOS and Linux: ~/.idapro/plugins/
- Windows: %APPDATA%\Hex-Rays\IDA Pro\plugins\
The result is …/plugins/assist/ida-plugin.json with the Assist binaries beside it. You can also install the downloaded archive with hcli: hcli plugin install <archive>.zip.

macOS: the Assist add-on is not notarized. On first launch macOS may block it. Ad-hoc sign it once after installing: codesign --force --sign - ~/.idapro/plugins/assist/assist.dylib. On a managed corporate machine you may need administrator help to allow the add-on.

First run

Open IDA and load the binary you want to analyze.
To invoke Assist, press Ctrl+Shift+K, or navigate to Edit → Plugins → Assist.

The first time you open Assist, an onboarding wizard walks you through a few steps.

Choose and configure a model

Select which model backend Assist will drive: a built-in agent that runs inside IDA with nothing to install, or an agent you already use (Claude Code, ChatGPT, Grok, or an API key/local endpoint), a separate program with its own sandbox that reaches the database through Assist. Assist found the models installed on your machine and proposes a possible setup.

You can change the agent later in Settings.

Settle permissions

Decide what Assist is allowed to do. Reading the database is always allowed; pick one of three modes for everything else: Look, don't touch, Ask before changes (recommended), or Work freely. You can change it later in Settings → Permissions.

Explore the Assist panel

Assist is dockable like any other IDA view, but has its own specific parts. More options, like Memory or Permissions, you'll find under Settings.

Go with the first prompt

Pick one of the suggested prompts to see Assist in action right away, or start from an empty composer.

Once configured, Assist is ready and opened as an IDA view. Type a prompt or use the proposed one, mention a function with @, reference an address with #, or run a slash /command from the start of the input.

Bring your terminal agent (optional)

If you also work in Claude Code, Codex or Grok, they can use this database through Assist, with the permissions you just chose. If you only use the panel, there is nothing to do here.

Pick your agent's tab and run the command it gives you in a terminal. The first time it connects, IDA asks whether to allow it.

What's next

See Concepts for how Assist works under the hood.

Last updated 8 days ago

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