A developer named Brandon Thomas just released seven free, open-source apps that copy Adobe’s Creative Cloud lineup — Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat. He built them in about a year using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 to write most of the code. The project is called ArtCraft. The apps are written in Rust, run natively on macOS, Windows, and Linux, and six of them also work in a browser via WebAssembly. PhotoCraft alone had roughly 39,000 GitHub stars by mid-October 2026, and the seven repositories together approached 75,000 [1]. But Thomas himself calls them “super early alpha,” and early testers report laggy controls, broken text editing, and shortcuts that do nothing [1][5].
What the seven apps actually do right now
PhotoCraft is the furthest along. It opens and saves layered PSD files, and re-saving preserves the look of 307 out of 309 files in a public PSD test suite [1]. It ships with layers, masks, layer styles, smart objects, a brush engine, 34 tools, 27 blend modes, and various filters [3]. GPU acceleration works via Vulkan on Linux, Metal on macOS, and DirectX 12 on Windows [3]. FilmCraft decodes H.264, HEVC, and AV1 with its own Rust code rather than relying on FFmpeg [1]. PdfCraft reads and edits PDFs. The other four — VectorCraft, LightCraft, EffectCraft, and DesignCraft — are still marked “in development” on the project’s own status page [1].
Thomas’s team puts FilmCraft’s readiness for real projects at 50 to 60 percent [1]. PhotoCraft’s own page says it “is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work” and lists missing AI and generative features, about twenty absent tools, typography and pro workflow gaps, and no plug-in support [1]. An experienced designer on Hacker News described the experience as a “superficial facsimile with pronounced flaws” — similar menus and shortcuts, but different output when you actually use the tools [3].
How AI wrote most of the code
Across the seven repositories, 3,876 of 5,031 commits credit Claude Opus 5.5 as a co-author — about 77 percent [1]. In PhotoCraft alone, those commits added more than 244,000 lines of code [1]. Smaller shares go to Claude Sonnet 5.5, Claude Fable 5.1, OpenAI’s Codex, and GitHub Copilot [1]. The project is set up for AI agents to do most of the work: FilmCraft’s developer guide describes an “autonomous work loop” where an agent picks the next task, writes tests first, builds the feature, checks it by driving the running app, and only asks a human about licenses, spending money, or publishing [1]. Every button and menu item is exposed as a command that can be called from a command line, a JSON control channel, or an MCP server — the standard that lets tools like Claude Code operate other software [1].
Thomas, who posts on Hacker News as echelon, says he hadn’t meant to publish the repositories so soon [1]. He has roughly a decade of experience with large-scale Rust projects [5]. Since February 2026 he has coded exclusively with AI tools [5].
Why he built it: cancellation fees and subscription fatigue
Thomas says the project started after he was “bit by the dark pattern ‘cancellation fee’ one too many times” [5]. Adobe’s individual Creative Cloud plan runs about $55 per month [2], and cancelling often means paying half the remaining annual balance [2][5]. On Reddit he wrote: “No more subscriptions with cancellation fees. These are yours to own forever. You can fork them, build them. Whatever. They are yours to own” [2]. The apps carry no telemetry or paywalls [1]. ArtCraft makes its money from a separate paid AI image and video tool [1], and Thomas says token-based access to that model and an IDE will fund ongoing development [5]. The code is under MIT and Apache licenses [2].
Who should use these today — and who shouldn’t
If you’re a casual user doing basic edits, PhotoCraft may already feel familiar enough to handle simple tasks [3]. The interface copies Adobe’s layout, menus, and keyboard shortcuts deliberately so existing Photoshop or Premiere users can find their way around [1]. But professionals will hit the gaps quickly: missing generative features, different blending behavior, broken text editing, no plug-in ecosystem, and color management that hasn’t had decades of refinement [1][3]. As one reviewer put it, “having similar features in similar locations with similar names/icons is not the same as features behaving or outputting that is the same” [3]. For now, Affinity Photo (which runs on Linux via Wine) remains a more complete alternative for pros who want off the subscription model [3].
The bigger shift: AI lowers the barrier to cloning complex software
The notable part isn’t just the apps — it’s the method. One developer used a large language model to scaffold clean-room clones of seven complex desktop applications in roughly a year [4]. Thomas claims “software is over” and predicts everyday developers will recreate open-source versions of popular paid software to “take back the internet and own tech forever” [5]. He plans to target Microsoft Office, AutoCAD, and SolidWorks next [1].
Legal questions loom. Clean-room implementation traditionally requires separate teams for specification and implementation [5]. Here, one developer used AI to study Adobe’s behavior and generate code. Ars Technica notes the apps could face trouble if their “trade dress” too closely mimics Adobe’s interface [5], referencing Apple v. Microsoft where look-and-feel claims mostly failed except for specific elements like the trash can icon [5]. Adobe has not publicly responded as of the reporting dates in these sources.
Sustainability is another open question. Rapid release cycles — PhotoCraft went from v0.1.0 to v0.5.0 in days [3] — show velocity, but long-term maintenance, security updates, and community governance are unproven. Thomas offers stipends and bug bounties to contributors [1], and says a team building software for filmmakers ensures funding [5]. Whether that holds if the AI tool revenue fluctuates remains to be seen.
For now, ArtCraft is a proof of concept that AI-assisted development can replicate the surface of industry-standard tools at unprecedented speed. Whether it reaches the depth that professionals rely on — and whether the legal framework holds — will play out in months, not years, if Thomas’s timeline is any guide [1].
Sources
- PhotoCraft and ArtCraft: free Adobe clones built with Claude
- AI developer builds free Adobe and Microsoft Office clones
- Artcraft Uses Claude Opus 5.5 to Clone All Seven Adobe Apps…
- PhotoCraft is an open-source, AI-built clone of Photoshop
- “Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open …
