hexvero: a binary-analysis MCP server with a 3k-token tool catalog vs ~510k for the incumbent
ImaginationVarious30 · reddit · 2026-10-14
Wanting a coding agent that can triage binaries and app bundles (ELF, PE, Mach-O, APK, Electron, .NET, Wasm…), the author compared against the established MCP server REA, whose tools/list alone is 1.95 MB — about 510k tokens in o200kbase, before a single file is opened.
So he built hexvero around one constraint: never flood the context window.
- 15 tools, a 12.8 KB catalog (3,043 tokens)
- Every list is paged with a hard byte budget (default 256 KiB, measured on real serialized size)
- A 541 MiB Electron app answers analyze in a 15 KB result; the full analysis goes to a file, not into context
- Findings are marked confirmed or inferred with file and line where possible; limitations state what was skipped
- Strings and decompiled code are treated as data from the target, never as instructions
Benchmarks on the same Electron app: the IPC/window-settings question took 7.9 KB with hexvero vs 1.3 MB of JSON with REA; diffing two builds took 1.2 KB vs 450 KB.
Fair caveat: REA is deeper — dynamic analysis, devices, firmware, full graphs — and the README has a full comparison with scripts. The author positions hexvero as the first look. npx hexvero setup --apply registers it with 18 clients (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI…). Free, MIT, no network, files never executed.
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