“Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones

Software developer Brandon Thomas debuted Artcraft, a suite of seven open source apps recreating Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, which he built in Rust using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to create "clean-room replacements" for Adobe's closed source software. Thomas stated on Reddit that the current "super early alpha" build will reach "100% [feature] parity within a month," later amending on Hacker News that "99% parity will take a while, but I'm sure it'll be measured in months and not years." Commenters on Hacker News and Bluesky have pointed out the new software's many current shortcomings.

For a while, those hoping to avoid the difficulty and expense of dealing with Adobe’s Creative Suite https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/is-adobe-really-this-bad.1471693/ have been able to use several free and/or open-source alternatives https://github.com/KenneyNL/Adobe-Alternatives that replicate some or all of those capabilities. Now, one developer is using AI-powered reverse engineering to mimic the look, feel, and functionality of Adobe’s well-known software with what he hopes will soon be perfect fidelity. Artcraft https://github.com/storytold/artcraft got its start last year https://web.archive.org/web/20250315000000 /https://getartcraft.com/ as a “controllable AI for artists” that allows for precise post-generation editing of AI-crafted images and videos. Over the weekend, though, the brand debuted its pivot https://web.archive.org/web/20261003233252/https://getartcraft.com/ to a suite of seven open source apps https://getartcraft.com/apps recreating the user interface and tools found in Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro. In announcing those new apps on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1wwnhbt/ive created open source 100 rust cleanroom/ earlier this week, software developer Brandon Thomas https://www.linkedin.com/in/possibilistic/ said he used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 to create “clean-room replacements” for Adobe’s closed source software in Rust with WebAssembly versions available for use in a browser . And while commenters on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49960138 and elsewhere https://bsky.app/profile/chinnyvision.bsky.social/post/3mxcfhzfgpc2c have taken pains https://bsky.app/profile/whatabouttheken.bsky.social/post/3mxcc3ey72c2f to point out the new software’s many current shortcomings, Thomas make the grandiose promise that the current “super early alpha” state https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49959605 will soon lead to something just as functional as anything Adobe has ever put out. “We’re going to reach 100% feature parity within a month,” Thomas stated on Reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/SaaS/comments/1wwnhbt/ive created open source 100 rust cleanroom/ of his plans to quickly squash bugs and add features with the help of community reports. Days later, on Hacker News https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850 49961661 , he amended that position slightly to say that “99% parity will take a while, but I’m sure it’ll be measured in months and not years.”