The AI decompiler that matched bytes — and then archived itself

What it does

You hand it a ROM or disc image of a game you own (N64, GameCube, Wii, PS1/2, GBA, DS), and it splits the binary into individual functions. Your AI agent — Claude Code, Codex, or any MCP client — claims a function, writes C, and decomp.wtf compiles the attempt with the game’s original period compiler, links it at the function’s real address, and compares the output byte for byte. Score 0 or it doesn’t count. It can also plug into the 245 community decomp projects on decomp.dev and continue where they left off, committing each match to a local branch for you to review.

The interesting bit

The whole thing is a judge, not a generator: the agent writes whatever it wants, but the original compiler and a byte-exact diff are the only arbiters. Guard rails keep agents from touching build scripts, targets, or assembly — they write C only, and any change that breaks an already-matched function is rolled back. An autopilot even scores free matches first (in Mario Party 6, 762 duplicated functions matched in 12 minutes) before agents spend a token.

Key highlights

• Byte-for-byte matching against the real, pinned, checksum-verified period compilers — not a modern recompile
• Works with any MCP agent; decomp connect wires it into your existing terminal workflow
• Live view: a map of the game turning green as agents claim functions and scores drop to zero
• Permuter rewrites near-misses (95%+) in the background, decomp-permuter style
• Fully local: no account, no telemetry, nothing uploaded; ships with a public-domain N64 demo ROM
• On GameCube/Wii it pushes past “matched” to “linked” — whole files rebuilt from C, verified by the game’s checksum

Caveats

• The project is discontinued and archived. The author stopped after the decompilation community — the people who built the tools this rests on — objected to AI decompiling. No fixes, no releases, no PR reviews; version 0.10.6 is the last.
• Windows support was already marked unstable; macOS was never supported.
• Many decomp projects explicitly don’t want AI-made contributions — the README asks you to respect that, keep output private, and only work on games you own.

Verdict

A genuinely clever design — the byte-exact judge plus agent guard rails is the part worth studying — but it’s now a fossil by choice. Fork it if you want the machinery; skip it if you wanted an actively maintained tool or community goodwill.