Reverse-engineering is cheap now

Simon Willison's Weblog · 3 months ago · 8

Coding agents have lowered the cost of writing automation code, making it economically sensible to reverse-engineer and automate home devices that previously wouldn't justify the effort. The reduced friction means developers can now prototype and maintain custom integrations without significant time investment or concern about future maintenance burden. This shifts the calculus for small personal projects where the human effort required was historically the limiting factor rather than technical difficulty.