Show HN: Ida Swarm – Multi-agent AI system for automated reverse engineering (github.com)

IDA Swarm is an open-source, research-focused multi-agent system that layers AI automation on top of IDA Pro to make reverse engineering more accessible. Presented as a passion project, it spawns multiple specialized IDA instances (“agents”) coordinated by an orchestrator (Qt UI or optional MCP server) to parallelize analysis tasks—function recovery, data-structure ID, control-flow reasoning, decompilation integration, and byte-level patching. The project emphasizes education and security research use cases and aims to lower the years-of-training barrier that traditional reverse engineering requires. Technically, agents run in isolated IDA databases (process-based spawning due to IDAlib issues in IDA Pro 9.0.240807), communicate via an IRC-style swarm and optionally via an MCP JSON-RPC server for external tool integration (Anthropic/Claude). Real-time patch replication uses Keystone for multi-architecture assembly, with deterministic temporary segments, code-cave detection, and no-go zones to coordinate code injection. The system deliberately separates analysis and patch workflows: independent analysis merges later to preserve unbiased reasoning, while patching is replicated immediately, forcing negotiation channels and consensus for conflicting modifications. Expect instability—known MCP/IDAlib bugs, frequent experimental changes, and the need for an Anthropic API key—yet the design highlights new paradigms for collaborative AI-assisted reverse engineering and the trade-offs between independent reasoning and shared state.