Seven open-source replacements for Adobe apps, written in Rust largely with Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5, had 86,265 GitHub stars between them at 12:04 UTC on 11 October, according to GitHub’s API. Brandon Thomas of ArtCraft, who posts on X as @echelon, announced them on 3 October: “I’ve vibe coded replacements to 7 of Adobe’s apps in Rust. They’re open source”.
The project became a weekend argument about software moats after Chamath Palihapitiya said on the All-In podcast that people had “decompiled” Adobe’s products and that “IP and software was effectively rendered worthless”. The project’s own rules describe a clean-room build, and its own roadmap puts the Photoshop replacement at about 45% ready for real work.
The seven apps sit under ArtCraft’s GitHub organisation, storytold: PhotoCraft for Photoshop, VectorCraft for Illustrator, FilmCraft for Premiere Pro, LightCraft for Lightroom, PdfCraft for Acrobat, EffectCraft for After Effects and DesignCraft for InDesign. Five repositories were created on 30 September and two on 1 October.
PhotoCraft leads with 44,649 stars and 6,896 forks, followed by LightCraft with 9,511 stars, FilmCraft with 9,255 and PdfCraft with 8,652. PhotoCraft’s code is licensed MIT or Apache-2.0, and it ships builds for macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD and the web.
PhotoCraft has moved fast: its first release, v0.1.0, came on 2 October and v0.7.0 on 11 October. GitHub’s contributors list for the repository runs to 199 entries, anonymous contributors included.
GitHub stars for the seven ArtCraft repositories that replace Adobe apps, as returned by the GitHub API at 12:04 UTC on 11 October 2026: PhotoCraft 44,649, LightCraft 9,511, FilmCraft 9,255, PdfCraft 8,652, VectorCraft 6,598, EffectCraft 4,849, DesignCraft 2,751; 86,265 in total.
Business Pill · SWITCHING COSTS
A one-minute explainer of switching costs: why it is hard to leave a supplier even when an alternative exists. It teaches the general idea only and says nothing about any person or organisation in this story.
The key insight: As we read it, the project’s own documents separate two things the weekend debate ran together: how much of Photoshop’s surface can be rebuilt, and how much of it a professional can rely on. By the roadmap’s estimates, PhotoCraft covers about 76% of the feature breadth but is about 45% ready for real work.
How Claude Fits In
The repository describes its own effort in model time. Its roadmap says: “Hours are Opus 5.5 agent wall-clock hours for one agent working sequentially, calibrated from this repository’s 1,004 merged PRs”.
The commit history shows the same thing. Of the latest 100 PhotoCraft commits, made between 22:31 UTC on 10 October and 12:01 UTC on 11 October, 76 carry a “Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5” line. The repository’s AGENTS.md opens as a “guide for AI agents and contributors”.
Thomas pushed back on X against the idea that he cannot code: “AI models enable me to work as an entire company.”
Decompiled or Clean-Room
In the All-In transcript, Palihapitiya said: “these folks decompiled it, distilled it, and published open source versions of these things.” He called it “the most important thing that happened this week in AI, in my opinion.”
The repository says otherwise about its method. Its AGENTS.md reads: “We studied Photoshop and other proprietary editors for behaviour and look only. Never copy their code, shaders, profiles or assets.” The README says PhotoCraft is “implemented from public specs and observed behaviour only. No proprietary code, shaders or assets.”
Its PSD support, the README says, is a standalone crate “written from Adobe’s public specification”. These are the project’s own statements; we have not audited the code.
How Close to Photoshop
The project’s roadmap, last reviewed on 10 October against Photoshop 2026, scores PhotoCraft at about 76% for feature breadth but about 45% ready for real work. It puts a mainstream practitioner at about 43% and an essentials user at about 61%.
The README is direct: “it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work”. It lists the biggest gaps as AI and generative features, 15 missing tools, depth in typography and pro workflows, and plug-in compatibility.
The roadmap also notes 579 open issues from users of versions 0.5 and 0.6, 22 of 25 performance budgets missed, and that PSDs PhotoCraft writes are not yet reliably accepted by Photoshop. It estimates about 1,100 to 1,800 agent-hours to beta and 2,300 to 4,100 to full parity.
PhotoCraft readiness against Photoshop 2026, from the project’s ROADMAP.md (last reviewed 10 October 2026): feature breadth about 76% (partly measured), essentials user about 61%, ready for real work about 45%, mainstream practitioner about 43% (estimated).
Beyond Adobe
On 7 October, the same organisation created repositories for clean-room versions of Microsoft Word, an Excel-style spreadsheet, PowerPoint, Avid Pro Tools and an AutoCAD-style design app: WordCraft, GridCraft, DeckCraft, SoundCraft and CADCraft.
Thomas had signalled it on 5 October: “Every closed workflow will fold. No more walled gardens, only community.”
What Thomas Says About Moats
On 10 October Thomas wrote: “LOC/headcount is no longer a moat”, meaning lines of code and headcount. He added: “The moat will be being good at scale.”
In a second post he compared software to food service: “Tons of competition, low margin for most. Price, quality, brand, and customer service matter.”
The Structural Read
The roadmap lists where the remaining distance sits: plug-ins and scripting at 15% ready, AI features at 10%, performance at 25%, and PSD files that Photoshop does not yet reliably accept. As we read it, two of those, plug-ins and PSD exchange, are what connect an editor to other people’s files and tools.
As we read it, that is where switching costs live. A designer can try a new editor in an afternoon; a studio that exchanges PSDs with clients and runs plug-ins and scripts every day carries more of its work across the switch.
The build itself shows the other side. The roadmap measures remaining work in Opus 5.5 agent-hours and says about 80% of it parallelizes. In a separate study, coding agents raised code output without a significant rise in finished work, with review the bottleneck; as we read it, PhotoCraft’s 199 listed contributors and 1,004 merged PRs make it one test of that at open-source scale.
SOFTWARE BUYERS PhotoCraft’s README says it is not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work; the roadmap puts readiness for an essentials user at about 61%.
INCUMBENT SUITES The roadmap scores plug-ins, scripting and ecosystem at 15% ready and says PSDs PhotoCraft writes are not yet reliably accepted by Photoshop, two gaps that sit in exchange with other tools.
BUILDERS The project publishes its effort in model hours, 1,100 to 1,800 Opus 5.5 agent-hours to beta by its estimate, which makes the cost of a rebuild something its authors now quote openly.
The analysis describes a split “driven by two converging forces: the democratization of development through AI-assisted coding and the intensification of enterprise integration dependencies.”
As we read it, ArtCraft shows both forces in one project: a suite rebuilt quickly with a coding model, and a roadmap that still lists plug-in compatibility and reliable PSD exchange with Photoshop among its open items.
What Is Not Established
Stars and forks measure attention on GitHub, not daily use. The readiness percentages are the project’s own estimates, and the roadmap calls most of them estimated rather than measured.
Palihapitiya’s description of the apps as decompiled is his. The project’s rules say the opposite, and we have not tested the apps or reviewed the code ourselves.
A Business Engineer analysis of why the SaaS market is splitting between a commoditization floor and an embedding ceiling as AI-assisted coding spreads.
Seven Adobe replacements built largely with Claude Opus 5.5 passed 86,000 GitHub stars in about a week and a half. By the project’s own measure, the Photoshop replacement covers about 76% of the feature breadth but is about 45% ready for real work, with plug-ins, AI features and reliable PSD exchange still open.
A note on sourcing. On 11 October 2026 we read the PhotoCraft README, roadmap, AGENTS.md and contributing guide in full, pulled star counts, releases and commit trailers from the GitHub API at 12:04 UTC, and read Brandon Thomas’s own posts on X. Chamath Palihapitiya’s remarks are quoted from an All-In transcript posted by @firesidealpha. Readiness figures are the project’s own estimates. We have not tested the apps. Nothing here is investment advice.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur, HackerNoon and Search Engine People. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
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