One Developer, Seven Adobe Apps, Zero Subscription
Brandon Thomas got tired of Adobe’s cancellation fees. So the Atlanta-based software engineer — a 15-year industry veteran, former CEO of Storyteller.ai, and former Square engineer — did something audacious: he rebuilt seven of Adobe’s flagship applications from scratch and released them free and open source.
The project is called ArtCraft, and the lineup reads like an Adobe price sheet in reverse: PhotoCraft (Photoshop), VectorCraft (Illustrator), FilmCraft (Premiere), LightCraft (Lightroom), EffectCraft (After Effects), DesignCraft (InDesign), and PrintCraft (Acrobat Pro). Every app is free, with no subscription, and the source code is public. ArtCraft’s own site puts the philosophy bluntly: “Stop renting from websites” — no subscriptions, no middleman, yours to keep.
The kicker: Thomas says he built them in the Rust programming language using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 as his AI coding partner, running multiple agents in parallel. Whether you call it vibe coding or AI-assisted engineering at an elite level, the output is staggering — hundreds of thousands of lines of Rust, native apps for macOS, Windows, and Linux, plus WebAssembly builds that run in a browser.
Why this exploded: 22,000 stars in a week
Developers noticed immediately. The seven repositories collected more than 22,000 GitHub stars in their first week, and coverage spread from PetaPixel to TechSpot to Gizmodo within days. Part of the fascination is the demo: the apps open real PSD files, wire up hundreds of menu items, and look convincingly like the software they replace.
But the deeper reason is resentment. Adobe’s subscription model has been a sore spot for years. The U.S. government sued Adobe in 2024 alleging it hid early-termination fees and made subscriptions hard to cancel; earlier this year Adobe agreed to a $150 million settlement while denying wrongdoing. Thomas himself says Adobe charged him cancellation fees “on multiple occasions.” Millions of casual users — the person who opens Photoshop twice a year for birthday invitations — have been paying a professional’s subscription for amateur usage. ArtCraft is aimed directly at that frustration.
The honest reality check: it’s alpha software
Before you cancel anything, hear the caveats — several from Thomas himself.
Thomas initially claimed the apps would reach “100% feature parity” with Adobe’s within a month. On Hacker News he walked that back: 99% parity would take “months, not years.” Early hands-on reports describe alpha-level software: basic editing works, but features are missing and interfaces can be glitchy. Project documentation cited by reviewers puts PhotoCraft at roughly 86% of mainstream features, with about two-thirds of PSD test files rendering pixel-perfect — impressive for weeks-old software, nowhere near a professional daily driver. Gizmodo’s reviewer, who tested PhotoCraft, called it “glitchy, but real, Photoshop” and still preferred it to some free alternatives.
There are also open legal questions. Thomas describes ArtCraft as a “clean-room reimplementation” — no Adobe code, written from scratch — and the project states it is not affiliated with Adobe. Whether Adobe’s lawyers agree that the look-and-feel imitation is fine remains to be seen. And Gizmodo offers a sensible warning that applies to any brand-new, AI-generated codebase: be cautious about what you install and what files you trust it with.
The money math for freelancers and side hustlers
Here is why this matters even in alpha: the direction is set. If you are a freelancer, content creator, or side hustler paying Adobe’s monthly subscription, ArtCraft is now the project to watch — a free, improving alternative you can already test on non-critical work. Every project you can complete in PhotoCraft or VectorCraft is a step toward asking whether the subscription still earns its keep.
The business model is also worth noting. The apps themselves are free; Thomas plans to fund development by selling token access to ArtCraft’s own AI image and video models through a separate offering. Free core tools, paid AI extras — the inverse of Adobe’s approach.
And there is a meta-lesson with dollar signs attached: a single experienced developer, paired with a frontier coding model, recreated in weeks what once required entire product divisions. If you sell software-adjacent services, the cost of building niche tools just collapsed. The next ArtCraft might target your industry’s overpriced incumbent.
What to do this week
- Don’t cancel Adobe yet. ArtCraft is not ready to replace a professional workflow. Keep your subscription while you evaluate.
- Download PhotoCraft and kick the tires on a throwaway project. See how much of your actual work it already handles — you may be surprised.
- Watch the repositories, not the hype. Star counts are vanity; commit activity and the parity roadmap tell you when it is safe to switch.
- If you build software, study what just happened: the moat around “complex desktop software” got dramatically shallower.
Sources: ArtCraft official site (free & open source, no subscriptions); PetaPixel (Oct 7, 2026); TechSpot; Notebookcheck. ArtCraft is not affiliated with Adobe Inc.; Adobe product names are trademarks of Adobe.