Claude refusing Reverse Engineer Anything tasks
A Reddit thread reporting Claude declining requests that involve the REA toolkit.
Earliest dated source:
The full story
After a Windows laptop crash, the owner had a crash dump but could not see the cause because the code involved is closed source. They gave the Reverse Engineer Anything skill to Claude Opus and then Claude Sonnet, and both declined the task.
The same job in opencode with DeepSeek identified the CPU instruction that failed, and a targeted registry change to a power setting worked around the problem. The poster complains about paying for a Claude plan that would not do it.
The thread is one of several reports of Claude refusing reverse engineering work on the user's own machines, even for diagnosis.
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Sources
From a short post by the maker, so the details are as they tell them.
- Reddit: Claude refuses anything to do with Reverse Engineer AnythingPublished
The poster's complaint in r/ClaudeCode about the refusal and the DeepSeek workaround.
If it disappears: archived copy of Reddit: Claude refuses anything to do with Reverse Engineer Anything (opens in a new tab)