A solo developer who set out to rebuild Adobe’s creative apps as free software is now going after office software. Brandon Thomas, who builds ArtCraft, has added word processing, spreadsheet and presentation apps called WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft to his open-source lineup. The announcement has drawn attention, but the details on the project’s own page are more modest than the headlines: the new apps are listed as in development, not as finished replacements for Microsoft Office.
Three new names on a growing list
ArtCraft started as a set of Rust-based tools meant to replicate Adobe applications, with image editing, vector drawing, video, photo management and more. The newest additions follow the same pattern: WordCraft for word processing, GridCraft for spreadsheets and data analysis, and DeckCraft for presentations. Thomas, a software engineer with about 15 years of experience according to coverage of the project, says he is building them with Anthropic’s Claude.
The list is larger than the headlines suggest. The project’s apps page currently names twelve programs. Besides the Adobe-style tools, it includes SoundCraft, an audio workstation, and CADCraft, a drafting and design tool. That matters because the report which prompted this article says an Autodesk-style tool may come next. According to the official page, CADCraft is already on the list, though only as work in progress.
What the official page actually says
The page describes every app as open source and written in Rust. They run natively on macOS, Windows and Linux, and eleven of the twelve also run in a browser through WebAssembly, a technology that lets compiled code run in web pages. All three of the new office apps are marked “In development.” Only PhotoCraft and PdfCraft carry the label “Early alpha.”
The page does not list which file formats any app supports. For office software that is the central question, because most people judge a Word or Excel replacement by whether it opens their existing documents without changing them. It also does not name the licenses, saying only that the code is on GitHub under permissive terms. Coverage elsewhere cites the MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses, which Thomas has described, but check the repository before you rely on that.
Installation goes through a launcher that installs and updates the apps, with per-app installers on each app’s page and source code on the project’s GitHub organization. One caution for readers: the page marks these apps as unfinished, so describing them as available to download as finished tools would overstate it.
Built with Claude, and the vibecoding question
Thomas says the apps were built with Claude Opus 5.5. That has made the project a lightning rod in the debate over “vibecoded” software, meaning programs produced mostly by prompting an AI model. Skeptics worry about code nobody has reviewed, and raise concerns about privacy, malicious code and unsafe file handling. Thomas responded on his X account that he does know how to code.
It is fair to note that Claude is made by Anthropic, whose models also wrote this article, so weigh our summary accordingly. The helpful distinction is between two questions. Can an AI model produce a lot of working code quickly? Evidently yes. Can a single developer make sure that code is correct, secure and complete? That depends on testing, review and outside contributors, and the project itself relies on community bug reports to stabilize its early builds.
A clean-room claim and a legal gray zone
Some commenters accused the project of copying Adobe and warned of legal trouble. Thomas has said the software is a clean-room reimplementation that does not use Adobe’s code or assets. A clean-room approach means writing new code from a description of behavior, not from the original source. Copying an interface or a workflow is not the same as copying code, and copyright law treats them differently, but that is a general point, not a legal opinion on this project. Patents, which protect specific methods, are a separate question. I have found no report of legal action against ArtCraft.
His stated motive is more personal than legal. Thomas has said he was “bit by the dark pattern cancellation fee one too many times” with Adobe, which gives the project its subscription-fatigue angle. Microsoft’s move from one-time purchases to subscription bundles is the obvious parallel, though that framing is commentary, not something the official page claims.
Why the cross-platform pitch matters
The strongest selling point is the same on every system. Adobe runs on macOS and Windows, while Linux users need compatibility layers or emulation. Microsoft’s apps have similar gaps outside Windows and macOS. A single codebase that runs natively on all three, and in a browser, would give Linux users a consistent experience, and it would offer an alternative to Google’s browser-only Docs, Sheets and Slides, which are free but online and not owned by the user.
Funding is addressed too. Thomas says ArtCraft’s paid AI tokens, used for image and video generation inside the suite, cover development costs, so the project does not rely on donations. That claim comes from his own statements, and I could not independently verify the business model.
How to approach these downloads
Treat everything here as test software. Download only from the project’s official site and its GitHub organization, not from mirrors or reposts, because popular open-source projects attract fake installers. Try the apps on copies of files, never on your only copy of an important document. Read the release notes, watch the issue tracker for security reports and wait for a few releases before using any of it for real work. Early reviews of the Adobe-style apps found missing features, rough performance and gaps in keyboard shortcuts, and the office apps start earlier in the process.
Judging the promise
Thomas has made big promises, including 100% feature parity with Adobe’s suite in a month, later softened to 99% within months. Office suites are harder in some ways, because decades of document-format quirks sit behind every file. The honest measure is simple: can you open a real document from your work, edit it and save it with nothing broken? Until the project shows that, these apps are an interesting experiment and a sign of how quickly AI can scaffold software, not a replacement for what you already use.
