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Overview

Assist is an AI harness for reverse engineering, docked directly inside IDA. Ask about your usual reverse-engineering task in plain language; Assist reads functions, types and cross-references the way a reverser would, then renames and retypes what it finds, with your approval. Designed for every IDA user, from junior reverse engineers to seasoned experts, Assist ships with its own built-in user guide, so you can learn what it can do as you go.

Bring your own model

Assist has no model of its own: choose the built-in agent, or bring one you already use, e.g., Claude Code, ChatGPT, Grok, or an API key/local endpoint. Existing sign-ins on your machine are detected automatically during setup.

Intuitive installation and setup

Assist is distributed as an add-on, with its own interactive wizard that guides you from installation to first setup. After configuration, it's dockable like any other IDA view.

What makes it different from a general AI chatbot?

  • A real AI harness, not a chatbot. Assist trains general-purpose LLMs to reason like reverse engineers, steering them toward IDA-specific workflows and terminology instead of generic coding advice.

  • Model-agnostic. Works with 10+ leading models, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google Gemini, xAI Grok, Meta, Mistral, Alibaba Qwen, DeepSeek, Moonshot AI Kimi, and Z.ai GLM. Any OpenAI-API-compatible model is natively supported, alongside Grok and Claude Code specifically.

  • Built-in reverse engineering expertise. Combines IDA-analysis tools, like disassembly and decompilation, rather than relying on the model alone.

What it can do?

Assist has over a hundred tools on the database. Describe the outcome, and it picks the tools. Six kinds of work:

  • Understand code: explain functions, follow cross-references, trace values.

  • Recover structure: name symbols, fix prototypes, build structs, add enums.

  • Repair and patch: fix wrong decompilation, patch bytes, NOP out checks.

  • Run code: emulate functions, explore branches, step a debug session, hook with Frida.

  • Triage and detect: survey an unfamiliar binary, write byte signatures, generate YARA rules.

  • Draw it: diagram call paths, struct layouts, memory maps, patch previews.

Each comes with ready-to-use example prompts you can try directly. Open Settings → Guide → What it can do to see them.

Assist is built for interactive, in-IDA use. For bulk, headless analysis or integration into agentic pipelines, see IDA MCP.

Licenses and Versions

Assist add-on is available on IDA 9.3, 9.4 or 9.5, with IDA Home and IDA Pro (Essential/Expert/Ultimate).

What's next?

Check the Getting Started guide to get you ready with Assist.

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