Between September 30 and October 7, 2026, a small development team inside ArtCraft built seven alternative graphic, video, and layout applications using 1.5 million lines of code and over 3,500 modifications, relying on Anthropic’s Claude AI. The resulting software tools—dubbed Crafting Apps—aim to replicate Adobe’s suite for free.
The rapid software generation effort produced PhotoCraft, VectorCraft, FilmCraft, LightCraft, PrintCraft, EffectCraft, and DesignCraft. These programs mirror Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects, and InDesign respectively. Written in Rust for Windows, macOS, and Linux, the applications were built from scratch without using Adobe’s original source code.
How Brandon Thomas Organized Autonomous AI Agents
The engineering velocity behind Crafting Apps stems from a multi-agent workflow rather than a single prompt. Brandon Thomas, founder of ArtCraft, assigned specialized tasks to multiple AI agents running concurrently. One agent handles a specific function while another builds a different capability, and separate agents execute automated testing and debugging.
GitHub repositories track the development footprint. Out of more than 3,500 total modifications logged during the frantic seven-day window, at least 2,493 explicitly involve Anthropic’s Claude. Human intervention remained necessary for critical decisions regarding licensing choices and public code distribution, while procedural instructions for the agents live inside dedicated GitHub configuration files.
Current Limitations in PhotoCraft and FilmCraft
Despite the generation speed, the resulting software currently exhibits substantial functional gaps. Internal project evaluations place PhotoCraft’s available toolset well below 50% parity with Adobe Photoshop. Users testing the beta release on Reddit and through technical reviews by DDay noted broken keyboard shortcuts, erratic text selection, and missing file compatibility for original Photoshop formats.
FilmCraft successfully cleared initial video container tests, but the application lacks the stability required for daily professional video editing workflows. ArtCraft officially designates several of these software releases as preliminary versions, where missing features and functional errors remain entirely expected.
Expansion Into Office Suites and Design Tools
Following the initial Adobe alternative rollout, the development team expanded the ArtCraft catalog to twelve total applications. New additions include WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft to target Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. SoundCraft and CADCraft round out the expansion for audio production and computer-aided design.
All twelve applications remain completely free and open source. Developers can inspect, modify, and fork the underlying repositories, provided they adhere to the respective open-source licenses governing the code.
Legal Distinctions Under European Copyright Frameworks
The legality of cloning industry-standard commercial software without authorization hinges on copyright boundaries. Under a 2012 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union, the underlying functionality of a software program is not protected by copyright. This means that a developer can create software capable of performing the same operations as a program, provided they use their own code.
Independent developers can legally build software that performs identical operations to existing commercial programs, provided they write original source code rather than duplicating proprietary binaries, copyrighted graphical assets, or trademarked branding. The Crafting Apps team asserts that all functional elements were built entirely from scratch.
