To get this out of the way, you should probably be more cautious than I’ve been about downloading and using a vibe coded piece of software today. Having said that, holy toledo, someone vibe coded their own entire version of Adobe Suite and dumped it on GitHub as open-source software.
Using Claude Opus 5.5 and the programming language Rust, the creator of these apps, Atlanta-based Brandon Thomas, says he recreated Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, After Effects, and InDesign, and made them free to use. The new versions are technically called Photocraft, Vectorcraft, Filmcraft, Lightcraft, Printcraft, Effectcraft, and Designcraft. The overarching umbrella project is titled Artcraft.
One of Thomas’ Reddit posts announcing the release is not coy about the Adobe connection, boasting that AI “help me recreate 7 of the top Adobe apps.”
Adobe, whose industry-standard creative software has long been a source of irritation for creatives—particularly the company’s behavior after it shifted to a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model. Earlier this year Adobe agreed to a $150 million settlement after the feds sued it back in 2024, alleging that it had been “trapping” people in subscription plans that weren’t maximally beneficial to consumers. The settlement came with an injunction fix alleged violations.
The only one of these I’m adept enough to test out quickly is Photocraft, the Photoshop knockoff, and here’s what I’ll say: it feels like using glitchy, but real, Photoshop. As someone who can’t justify the monthly cost just so I can use Photoshop twice a year to make my kids’ birthday party invitations, I rely on free, lightweight in-browser alternatives like Photopea, which are fine for basic tasks, or the notoriously convoluted open source alternative, Gimp.
It pains me to report that using Photocraft, which was released online last week, felt like a breath of fresh air compared to those.
It took me about one minute to make this monstrosity:
The commands for all the tasks involved—lasso-ing Dario Amodei’s head, feathering my selection, pasting it onto the Mona Lisa, transforming my selection so his face replaced the lady’s, futzing with the levels, and fixing the color—were all where I expected them to be. But it should be noted that the Free Transform function was an unpredictable mixed bag. Escaping from Free Transform simply didn’t work. Then it undid itself. Then, after trying the same thing a few times, it worked, but I don’t know why.
There are tons and tons of complaints aside from mine, and Thomas himself has said in a forum post on Hacker News that the applications are in an early alpha state and, “not anywhere close to ready.” He invites developers to contribute to the open source project, and says he’ll pay bug bounties.
Before “rogue” AI mania took over the news cycle, one of the big 2026 AI stories was the SaaSpocalypse, an idea prevalent on Wall Street that rather than paying for subscriptions to software, users would soon just code their own, sorta like Thomas has done here.
For what it’s worth, Thomas’ Reddit post says he’s “not just some casual vibe coder,” but a “15-year industry veteran who has written everything from six-nines payment rails that move billions of dollars of transaction volume a day to advanced robotics and optics automation.” So it’s probably too soon to start writing those Mark Cuban-style “software is dead” posts again. Nonetheless, Adobe probably isn’t delighted to have this sort of competition.
