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

What happened: Developer Brandon Thomas debuted Artcraft, a suite of seven open source apps recreating the interfaces and tools of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, built with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 in Rust. Key numbers: Seven apps. Why it matters: Commenters on Hacker News and elsewhere pointed out many current shortcomings, and the apps are in a "super early alpha" state. Thomas frames the release as a clean-room replacement for Adobe's closed source software.

Developer Brandon Thomas debuted Artcraft, a suite of seven open source apps recreating the interfaces and tools of Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign, and Acrobat Pro, built with Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 in Rust.

Commenters on Hacker News and elsewhere pointed out many current shortcomings, and the apps are in a "super early alpha" state. Thomas frames the release as a clean-room replacement for Adobe's closed source software.