Someone vibe-coded Adobe’s apps, and gave them away

What happened

At the end of September, Brandon Thomas, who runs the AI image and video studio ArtCraft, put open source rewrites of Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign and Acrobat on GitHub. He says Claude did much of the coding, and that the push came from Adobe’s fee for cancelling a yearly plan early. Within weeks Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Figma, AutoCAD and Pro Tools followed, and the PhotoCraft repo alone passed 70,000 stars.

• They look like the apps you know. Menus, panels, tools and shortcuts follow the originals, so there is little to relearn.
• They open real files. PhotoCraft opens and saves layered PSD and PSB documents; the others aim at their originals’ formats too.
• They’re native, and free. Each is written in Rust for Mac, Windows and Linux, with no Electron, under the MIT or Apache 2.0 licence. All but FilmCraft also run in a browser tab.
• Agents can drive them. Every action is a command you can run from a CLI, a JSON channel or an MCP server.

The thirteen apps

AppInstead of, and where it runs

PhotoCraftAdobe Photoshop
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

VectorCraftAdobe Illustrator
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

LightCraftAdobe Lightroom
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

DesignCraftAdobe InDesign
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

FigCraftFigma
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

CADCraftAutoCAD and SolidWorks
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

FilmCraftAdobe Premiere Pro
Windows, Mac, Linux

EffectCraftAdobe After Effects
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

SoundCraftAvid Pro Tools
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

WordCraftMicrosoft Office
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

GridCraftMicrosoft Office
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

DeckCraftMicrosoft Office
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

PdfCraftAdobe Acrobat
Windows, Mac, Linux, Browser

Where to get them

• ArtCraft LauncherFree One installer for every Crafting App that picks the right build for your computer and keeps them all up to date. Each app also has standalone installers on its own page. Mac, Windows, Linux The source on GitHub
• PhotoCraftFree The one everyone is trying: layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, type and brushes, with real PSD files. Instead of Photoshop
• FilmCraftFree A Premiere-style editor with source and program monitors, a multitrack timeline and ripple, roll, slip and slide trims. Instead of Premiere Pro
• WordCraftFree The start of the Microsoft side: Word, with GridCraft for Excel and DeckCraft for PowerPoint beside it. Instead of Microsoft Word

Try one safely

1. Download from the source. Get the Launcher or a single app from getartcraft.com or the storytold releases on GitHub, not from a mirror site.
2. Work on copies. Open a duplicate of a real PSD, video project or document and compare it with the original before you trust it.
3. Keep your old app for now. These are early alphas; finish paid work in the tools you know and use the new ones alongside.
4. Report what breaks. Issues on GitHub, with your system and a screenshot, are how the gaps close.