Show Notes
What if the hardest part of building software stopped being writing the software? This episode covers ArtCraft, a project from developer Brandon Thomas that has released open-source, clean-room alternatives to seven Adobe applications: PhotoCraft for Photoshop, VectorCraft for Illustrator, FilmCraft for Premiere, LightCraft for Lightroom, EffectCraft for After Effects, DesignCraft for InDesign, and PDFCraft for Acrobat.
These are working native applications written in Rust, with several able to compile to WebAssembly and run in a browser. The repositories describe each one as a clean-room reimplementation, built from public specifications and observed behavior rather than Adobe's proprietary source code or assets, and the ArtCraft GitHub organization presents them as a team project rather than the work of one person alone. PhotoCraft's own repository describes a native Rust image editor supporting layers, masks, adjustment layers, type, vectors, brushes, and PSD files, controllable through its interface, a command line, JSON, or an MCP server, the Model Context Protocol that gives AI agents a standard way to operate the same commands a human would use.
Public reporting attributes the AI-assisted development claim to Thomas, who said Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 was used to help recreate the applications. The episode explains what that looks like in practice: an agent working through thousands of smaller engineering problems like building a layer model, implementing undo and redo, parsing a PSD file, and writing tests, while a human still defines the target, sets constraints, and evaluates the results.
The episode is direct about where things stand: PhotoCraft's own README describes it as early alpha and not yet a replacement for Photoshop in daily professional work, since having every menu item wired to a command doesn't mean its behavior matches Photoshop's in depth or reliability. What stands out instead is the speed of getting this far, and what it suggests about the changing economics of rebuilding mature, full-featured software, plus a second idea: since these applications are built to be agent-ready, AI isn't just helping build the software — it can become a user of it too.
Sources & References Ars Technica: "Software is over": Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones — https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-developer-takes-aim-at-adobe-with-open-source-clones/ ArtCraft: GitHub organization — https://github.com/storytold PhotoCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/photocraft VectorCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Illustrator in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/vectorcraft FilmCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Premiere Pro in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/filmcraft LightCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Lightroom in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/lightcraft EffectCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe After Effects in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/effectcraft DesignCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe InDesign in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/designcraft PDFCraft: open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Acrobat in pure Rust — https://github.com/storytold/pdfcraft Reddit: discussion/post about the seven Rust Adobe alternatives — https://www.reddit.com/r/GeminiAI/comments/1wwo52q/ive_created_open_source_100_rust_replacements_for/
Voice narration is AI-generated.
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