spectrida 0.2.5

Ghost through binaries — parallel IDA analysis + AI function naming in your terminal

👻 spectrIDA

Ghost through binaries.

A local, AI-powered reverse engineering assistant: parallel IDA Pro analysis, AI function naming, a terminal that doesn't suck, a Neo4j knowledge graph of everything it's ever figured out, and an MCP server so Claude can search and chain through that graph directly.

spectrida analyze GameAssembly.dll --workers 16

◈  spectrIDA  ▸  GameAssembly.dll

  ✓ 00  ✓ 01  ✓ 02  ✓ 03  ▸ 04  · 05  · 06  · 07
  ✓ 08  ✓ 09  ✓ 10  ✓ 11  ✓ 12  ✓ 13  ▸ 14  · 15

  14/16 shards  │  141,203 functions found
  ████████████████████████████░░░░  89%  ~4s remaining

---

What it is

IDA Pro's auto-analysis is single-threaded. On a 34 MB il2cpp DLL that's minutes. spectrIDA splits the binary into N shards, runs them in parallel via idalib, merges into one .i64, then lets a fine-tuned 8B model name every function — all from one terminal UI with a cyberpunk theme and exactly the right amount of sarcasm.

That's Chapter 1, and it stands on its own: pure speed, no AI required if you don't want it.

Chapter 2 turns the output into something that outlives the session — a Neo4j graph an MCP client (Claude, pi, whatever speaks MCP) can actually live in, instead of you copy-pasting decompiler output into a chat window one function at a time:

Binary  ─▶  Parallel IDA Analysis  ─▶  Demangle  ─▶  AI Naming  ─▶  Neo4j Graph  ─▶  MCP Server  ─▶  Claude
              (N idalib shards)       (free, real)   (stripped     (persists,        (search/chain/
                                                       leftovers     forever,          rename, live)
                                                       only)         across sessions)

Full rundown, including what's still on the to-do pile, is down in Chapter 2.

It is not Ghidra. It does one annoying thing (slow analysis + naming) fast, and it's genuinely fun to use. 199 downloads speak for themselves.

No cloud. No telemetry. Runs entirely on your machine.

---

Numbers

task	time
Among Us DLL — single-threaded IDA	~4 hours
Among Us DLL — spectrIDA (16 workers)	67 seconds
153,649 function binary — full naming pass	overnight
Binary overview (what does this thing do?)	~30 seconds

Hardware these were measured on: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D (8C/16T), 32 GB RAM, RTX 4070 12 GB. Different hardware moves the parallel-analysis numbers (more cores, more shards, faster); the naming numbers are mostly GPU-bound. The 4-hour/67-second Among Us figures predate Chapter 2 and aren't independently re-verified in every release — re-run spectrida analyze yourself if you want a number for your own machine and binary, results vary with shard density and binary size.

Numbers actually re-verified during Chapter 2 development, same hardware:

binary	functions	task	time / result
test_small.dll (PE)	189	parallel analysis, 4 workers, CLI	6.4s
test_small.dll (PE)	164	full MCP pipeline (analyze + demangle + graph write)	9.8s
main.nso — Mario Odyssey (NSO), 16 workers	28,038 seed functions	parallel sharded scan phase	54.5s
main.nso — Mario Odyssey (NSO), 16 workers	74,790 total functions	+ merge/full-analysis phase	143.1s
main.nso — Mario Odyssey (NSO), 16 workers	74,790 total functions	end-to-end wall time	197.6s
main.nso — Mario Odyssey (NSO)	74,790	resolved via demangling alone (Itanium ABI, free, no AI)	67,300 (90.0%)

That NSO row is the real equivalent of the old Among Us "4 hours → 67 seconds" claim, measured fresh this release on a 74,790-function Switch binary, no AI naming involved (demangling only — populate=False). The parallel phase (16 cores, ~55s) does the initial sharded discovery; the merge phase (~143s) is single-threaded by design — one IDA database, one writer — so if you watch Task Manager during that part and see 15 cores napping, that's not a bug report, that's physics.

Getting an honest number here was its own small horror story. The first version of NSO support ran clean, exited 0, and proudly returned 727 functions for a binary that has roughly 75,000 of them — not a crash, just spectacularly, confidently wrong, which is somehow worse. Turns out IDA has no native NSO loader, so the file silently loaded as plain x86 ("metapc") even though the Switch has been ARM64 since the box launched. Every shard ran an x86 prologue scanner against pure AArch64 instructions and called whatever it accidentally matched a "function." Fixing the architecture fixed nothing on its own, because the binary was also still LZ4-compressed in memory — so half of what got scanned was, generously, noise. And even once it was properly decompressed and flagged AArch64, each shard was only hunting for call targets inside its own tiny slice of the binary, missing every call that crossed a shard boundary — which in a binary this size is most of them. Three bugs, one number, and not one of them had the decency to throw an exception. (We also tried shaving the merge phase down by skipping IDA's stack-frame analysis — got a beautiful speedup and a database where Hex-Rays politely refused to decompile half of it. That got reverted fast. Kept the much smaller, much safer FLIRT-signature skip instead, which is worth a shrug-worthy ~3% and didn't break anything, which by this point felt like a personality trait worth keeping.)

On naming accuracy: it's not Ghidra-grade ground truth, it's an 8B model guessing from pseudocode. Generic helpers/getters tend to land well; deeply game-specific logic is more of a coin flip. Rename anything it gets wrong — that's why rename_function persists straight back into the graph.

---

Features

• Parallel sharded analysis — splits into address-space shards, runs N idalib instances, merges into one .i64. Workers configurable via flag, config, or env var.
• Pluggable format support — PE, NSO (Switch), and ELF (.so/Linux) ship built-in; adding a new one is a single file, no core changes. spectrida formats lists what's registered. See Adding a new binary format.
• AI function naming — fine-tuned Qwen3-8B runs locally via Ollama, streams names token-by-token. Press N. Watch it think. Name appears.
• Batch naming — B to name every sub_* function in the list. Walk away. Come back.
• Binary overview — press O or run spectrida overview file.i64. Model reads 120 sampled function names and tells you what the binary does, what its subsystems are, and anything security-relevant. Correctly identified a 153k-function IL2CPP runtime in 30 seconds.
• Call chain explorer — C shows callers and callees. The model uses these as context when naming — a function called by Player$$TakeDamage gets named better than one in isolation.
• Decompiler view — D toggles Hex-Rays pseudocode.
• Export — dump everything to JSON, CSV, IDA .idc script, or a symbols file. The .idc applies all AI-generated names back into any IDA install in one click.
• Programmatic API — from spectrida.api import open_i64. Drive everything from scripts, notebooks, or Claude Code without touching the TUI.
• MCP server — spectrida install mcp wires it straight into Claude Code and/or pi, no manual JSON editing. Claude can then search/read/chain through a Neo4j-backed function graph (name, pseudocode, disassembly, callers/callees) and kick off a fresh analysis on a new binary itself — analyze_binary runs the whole pipeline (parallel analysis → demangle → AI naming → graph) from one tool call, as a background job it polls. Works on PE and NSO. See Chapter 2 below.
• Demo mode (spectrida --demo) — try the whole thing with zero setup. No IDA, no Ollama.
• A first-run wizard — helps you install Ollama + the model, detects your IDA install automatically, then never asks again.

---

Install

pip install spectrida

Requirements: IDA Pro 9.x with idalib · Python 3.10+ · Ollama

# install Ollama (Windows)
winget install Ollama.Ollama

# pull the model (8.7 GB — go get coffee)
ollama pull hf.co/gdfhhjk/spectrida-re-gguf:latest

# first run — detects your IDA install and sets everything up
spectrida onboard

# or just try the demo right now
spectrida --demo

---

Commands

# analyze a binary from scratch
spectrida analyze GameAssembly.dll
spectrida analyze GameAssembly.dll --workers 8    # custom worker count

# open an existing .i64 in the browser
spectrida open file.i64

# ask the AI what this binary is
spectrida overview file.i64
spectrida overview file.i64 --addr 0x10001000 --addr 0x10353fd0  # include specific functions

# export function names
spectrida export file.i64 -f idc           # IDA script — apply names to any install
spectrida export file.i64 -f json          # full dump with addresses + sizes
spectrida export file.i64 -f csv           # spreadsheet
spectrida export file.i64 -f symbols       # addr name pairs
spectrida export file.i64 --named-only     # skip sub_* functions

# check Ollama + model status
spectrida serve

# re-run the setup wizard
spectrida onboard

---

TUI keys

Key	Action
N	Name selected function — AI streams the result live
R	Rename — pre-filled with the AI suggestion
D	Toggle decompiled pseudocode (Hex-Rays)
C	Call chain — callers and callees
B	Batch-name all sub_* functions in the current list
O	Overview — AI summary of the whole binary
/	Fuzzy search
?	Help
Q	Quit

---

Programmatic API

No TUI needed — drive spectrIDA from scripts, Claude Code, notebooks, whatever:

import asyncio
from spectrida.api import open_i64

async def main():
    async with open_i64("GameAssembly.i64") as db:

        # list all 153k functions
        funcs = await db.list_functions()

        # name one function — returns name + reasoning + confidence
        result = await db.name_function(0x10001000)
        print(result["new_name"])     # init_atexit_handler
        print(result["reasoning"])    # allocates array of 3 fn ptrs, calls _atexit...

        # batch name everything (with live progress)
        async def on_progress(done, total, r):
            print(f"  {done}/{total}  {r['old_name']} -> {r['new_name']}")

        await db.batch_name(limit=500, rename=True, progress_cb=on_progress)

        # ask what the binary does
        overview = await db.overview()
        print(overview)

        # export to IDA script
        await db.export("names.idc", fmt="idc", named_only=True)

asyncio.run(main())

---

The model

hf.co/gdfhhjk/spectrida-re-gguf — Qwen3-8B fine-tuned for reverse engineering.

Trained on:

• x86/x64 assembly → function name pairs with call-chain context
• Tool call traces from jtsylve/ida-mcp — headless IDA with idalib
• Extended context reasoning traces from a codebase context server

Training approach: neuron-targeted SFT + GRPO. Only the RE-relevant neurons are tuned — base Qwen3 knowledge stays intact, you just added a very specific skill on top.

Runs locally via Ollama. GGUF — works on CPU, GPU, or both.

---

Who is this for

You're reversing something. You have a binary with 150,000 functions. Maybe 2,000 have names from metadata. The other 148,000 are sub_XXXXXXXX. You want to find the network code. You can't grep for it because nothing has a name yet.

A human RE can name ~50-100 functions per hour if they're fast. At that rate, 150k functions = 3 years.

spectrIDA names them overnight. Not perfectly — maybe 70% accuracy on generic functions, much higher on patterns the model recognizes. But now instead of 148k sub_ functions you have network_send_packet, serialize_player_state, validate_checksum — and you know where to look.

It doesn't replace a skilled reverse engineer. It does the boring 80% so you can focus on the interesting 20%. It's the orientation layer.

Real use cases:

• Game modding — find the physics system in a 150k-function binary in minutes, not days
• Security research — malware triage, understand a binary's architecture quickly
• CTF — time pressure, need to know what you're looking at immediately
• Anyone who has stared at sub_140001234 for 20 minutes thinking there has to be a better way

---

Configuration

~/.spectrida/config.toml:

[ida]
idalib = "C:/Program Files/IDA Professional 9.1"
output_dir = "~/.spectrida/output"

[ollama]
base_url = "http://localhost:11434"
model = "spectrida-re"   # any ollama model name works

[pipeline]
workers = 16

Env var overrides: SPECTRIDA_IDALIB · SPECTRIDA_MODEL · SPECTRIDA_WORKERS · SPECTRIDA_OLLAMA_URL

---

Adding a new binary format

Format support is a plugin system, not a pile of if/elif branches — PE, NSO, and ELF are all just files under spectrida/analysis/formats/, discovered automatically. Run spectrida formats to see what's currently registered.

$ spectrida formats
ELF        spectrida.analysis.formats.elf.ELFHandler
NSO        spectrida.analysis.formats.nso.NSOHandler
PE         spectrida.analysis.formats.pe.PEHandler
generic    spectrida.analysis.formats.generic.GenericHandler

A format handler's job is narrow — look at a file and say whether you own it, then describe its code layout. Everything else (sharding strategy, GPU prologue scanning, merging shards into one .i64) is handled once, generically, outside the format package. NSO is the full example: its LZ4 decompress + idaapi mem2base/add_segm logic already lived in nso_loader.py (the fix for the wrong-arch/still-compressed/locally-blind-entry-point bugs from Chapter 2's history) — formats/nso.py is a thin adapter exposing that existing, validated module through the FormatHandler contract, not a rewrite.

To add a format, drop one new file in spectrida/analysis/formats/ and nothing else. No edits to parallel_analyze.py, shard_worker.py, or the registry — it's picked up by scanning the directory for any module exposing a HANDLER instance.

# spectrida/analysis/formats/myformat.py
from spectrida.analysis.formats.base import FormatHandler, PreparedImage, Section

class MyFormatHandler(FormatHandler):
    name = "MYFMT"

    @staticmethod
    def sniff(header: bytes, path: str) -> bool:
        return header[:4] == b"MYF0"          # however you recognize the format

    def prepare(self, path: str, workdir: str) -> PreparedImage:
        # Format idalib already loads natively (ELF, PE, Mach-O)? Just parse
        # the section/segment table — return the original path unchanged.
        return PreparedImage(
            binary_path=path,
            image_base=0,
            sections=[Section(name=".text", va=0x1000, raw_off=0x400,
                               raw_size=0x2000, vsize=0x2000, is_code=True)],
            arch=None,        # set "x86_64"/"arm64" only if IDA can't detect it itself
        )

    # Only needed if idalib has NO native loader for this format (NSO is the
    # example): do any manual idaapi/ida_segment setup here, called right
    # after idapro.open_database() succeeds, before analysis starts.
    # def post_open(self) -> None: ...

HANDLER = MyFormatHandler()

That's the whole contract:

Method	Required?	What it does
sniff(header, path)	yes	Magic-byte/extension check — does this handler own the file?
prepare(path, workdir)	yes	Return a PreparedImage: the file idalib should open + its section table
post_open()	no (default no-op)	Manual segment setup for formats with no native IDA loader (see nso.py)
make_shard_binary(image, dst, va_start, va_end)	no (default works)	Override only if zeroing out-of-shard section bytes is wrong for your format (see nso.py — never zero a compressed file)
code_range(image)	no (default works)	Override only if "min/max of is_code sections" isn't the right answer
read_bytes(image, va_start, va_end)	no (default works)	Override if prepare() already holds the relevant bytes in memory (NSO) instead of on disk
global_entry_points(image, text_start, text_end)	no (default: None)	Only override if a per-shard local scan would miss real entry points — NSO needs this because AArch64 leaf functions are only discoverable via BL targets seen elsewhere in the binary, not a local prologue scan

Look at formats/pe.py for the simplest possible handler (pure header parsing, no overrides) and formats/nso.py for the full case (wraps decompression + manual segment setup + every override).

Third-party packages can register a handler too, without touching spectrIDA's source at all, via the spectrida.formats entry-point group:

# in a separate package's pyproject.toml
[project.entry-points."spectrida.formats"]
myformat = "spectrida_myformat_plugin:HANDLER"

Test coverage for the format system lives in tests/test_formats.py — pure Python, no IDA/idalib required, so it runs in CI.

---

Chapter 2 — the ghost learns to talk back

Chapter 1 was a faster, funnier IDA. Chapter 2 is spectrIDA as a teammate: a persistent, queryable knowledge graph of every function it's ever named, and an MCP server so Claude (or any MCP client — pi works too) can search and reason through it directly, instead of you copy-pasting decompiler output into a chat window.

spectrida install mcp

That's it. It registers the server with Claude Code and pi automatically (pulling in mcp + neo4j if a bare pip install spectrida skipped them), writes their config, and tells you which restart you owe it.

What Claude actually gets, once Neo4j is running (spectrida config [graph] section, or just point it at a local instance):

• search_functions / get_function / get_callees / get_callers / trace_chain — fast, cached graph reads. get_function returns pseudocode and disassembly (exact instruction boundaries and operands — the layer pseudocode can't give you, which matters the moment you go from "what does this do" to "where exactly would I patch this") plus inline callers/callees, so Claude decides whether to chain deeper by looking at whether a callee is still sub_* right there in the response — no extra round trip just to find out there's nothing more to see.
• get_full_pseudocode / rename_function — live, authoritative reads/writes straight to the .i64 when the cached snippet isn't enough or a name is finally figured out.
• analyze_binary — hand it a binary it's never seen (PE or NSO, parallel-sharded either way) and it runs the whole pipeline — analyze → demangle (Itanium and MSVC) → AI-name the genuinely stripped leftovers → push it all into the graph — as one background job you poll, so a multi-minute run never blocks the conversation.
• doctor / start_all — check or boot llama-server + Neo4j without leaving the chat. If llama-server itself isn't installed anywhere, start_all grabs it via winget (Windows) or brew (macOS) first — no separate llama.cpp download/setup needed.

It's not magic — a function that's still sub_140001234 because nobody's looked at it yet is still sub_140001234. But the graph remembers everything the model has figured out, forever, across sessions, and Claude can walk it like a colleague who already read the codebase instead of staring at one function at a time.

Still coming:

• Deep context naming — follow call trees N levels deep, feed the full chain to the model. A function 3 hops from encrypt_block should know it's in the crypto path.
• Deobfuscation — TigressVM pattern detection and handler tracing
• Actual patching — the disassembly is in the graph now so an agent can plan a byte-level patch; turning "here's the exact instruction to change" into "and here's the write" is next.

---

License

MIT. Do whatever you want with it. If it works, cool. If it doesn't, blame the GGUF quantization.

Built with spite, coffee, and an RTX 4070. The model has 199 downloads with zero marketing. Each one adds 0.01% to development speed. (This is not true. But it's close.) 👻