Kampala
Ranked 6 of 9 reverse engineering tools by recommenders
People recommend it for turning app interactions into APIs and for debugging, but critics warn it may breach terms of service.
People recommend it for turning app interactions into APIs and for debugging, but critics warn it may breach terms of service.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 64%
Recommended in 1 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.7 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Speeds up integration and debugging
“we have a few nice tools (like being able to a/b test payloads/replay requests) that meaningfully reduce integration time”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” “I use Kampala to debug our personal APIs/web app all of the time.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” Turns UI actions into API calls
“It is a good demonstration that 47 iterations of a recursive Claude agent writing itself to decompose any transport.”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” “have a fully featured MCP (each UI action is an api action by definition)”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” Useful for testing and datasets
“Think this is really interesting especially for creating datasets.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” “potentially quite powerful for automated testing of SPAs”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Ethics and terms of service concerns
“If a web property has implemented anti-bot mechanisms, what ethical reasons do you have for providing evasion as a service?”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” “It's pretty funny to see that in their demo video given it's a blatant violation of their ToS.”
Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” “this is pretty much YC sposoring illegal activities now.”
Comment from 17 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs” - Comment from 16 Apr 2026 in “Launch HN: Kampala (YC W26) – Reverse-Engineer Apps into APIs”
Other reverse engineering tools people recommend
The four most recommended other reverse engineering tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ghidra | 80 | 20 | 80% | 13 | — | Approved |
| GhidraMCP | 30 | 11 | 73% | 10 | — | Approved |
| IDA Pro | 25 | 7 | 78% | 9 | — | Approved |
| REA Reverse-Engineer Anything | 14 | 9 | 61% | 2 | — | — |
| KampalaThis page | 7 | 4 | 64% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 19 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It is a good demonstration that 47 iterations of a recursive Claude agent writing itself to decompose any transport.”
“it now does about 70% of my "reverse engineering" work”
“Internally we do this all of the time for our white glove integrations.”
“this is pretty much YC sposoring illegal activities now.”
“It's pretty funny to see that in their demo video given it's a blatant violation of their ToS.”
“Kampala is a powerful tool but I don't see people replacing the actual apps with it.”
“We are using real tokens that you have received from your browser as a result of browsing the web.”
“If a web property has implemented anti-bot mechanisms, what ethical reasons do you have for providing evasion as a service?”
“There is nothing unethical about this.”
“I use Kampala to debug our personal APIs/web app all of the time.”
“smeels like severe breach of ToS”
“potentially quite powerful for automated testing of SPAs”
“This can be a bit sketchy though and is the main bottleneck right now.”
“have a fully featured MCP (each UI action is an api action by definition)”
“I tried Kampala but got stuck at the usual place; as soon as I enable it, chatGPT stops working.”
“we have a few nice tools (like being able to a/b test payloads/replay requests) that meaningfully reduce integration time”
“Think this is really interesting especially for creating datasets.”
“Links on the page doesn't work, at least not for me”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.