A week-old open source team rebuilt Illustrator and After Effects from scratch in Rust, and then Claude Code drove the After Effects clone through its own built-in MCP server.
Posted
2 days ago
Duration
Format
Demo
educational
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231.8K
4.8K likes
57 · 43
Big Idea
The argument in one line.
A week-old open source project named ArtCraft has cloned After Effects and Illustrator in pure Rust well enough that Claude Code can operate the After Effects clone directly through a built-in MCP server.
Who This Is For
Read if. Skip if.
READ IF YOU ARE…
A Linux user who has been locked out of Adobe-grade creative software because tools like Affinity never shipped a Linux build.
A Claude Code user curious what it looks like when a desktop creative app exposes its own first-party MCP server for an AI agent to drive.
An open source advocate who wants to see how close a week-old clean-room clone can get to a paid Adobe app.
A motion graphics hobbyist deciding whether a free After Effects alternative is usable enough to try before paying for Creative Cloud.
SKIP IF…
You're a professional editor who needs stable, fully-featured software today. These are days-old alpha builds with broken drag-and-drop and missing anchor-point editing.
You're looking for a tutorial on using After Effects or Illustrator themselves. This is a first-impressions test of clones, not either Adobe app.
TL;DR
The full version, fast.
ArtCraft is rebuilding all seven major Adobe apps from scratch in pure Rust as clean-room reimplementations, not cracked originals. This video tests two: VectorCraft, an Illustrator clone, and EffectCraft, an After Effects clone, built from source on Linux since no native build exists yet. VectorCraft handles booleans, gradients, and text-to-path conversion but won't let you move an individual anchor point. EffectCraft imports footage, color-grades it, and tracks a face with its built-in tracker, but manually linking that tracker to an effect fails. The fix comes through EffectCraft's first-party MCP server: one spoken request lets Claude Code convert the color space, redo the tracking, and add text. Neither app is ready to replace a professional Adobe workflow, but reaching this far after one week in public is the real story.
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The ArtCraft team has rebuilt seven major Adobe apps from scratch in pure Rust. FUTC clarifies these are clean-room reimplementations, not cracked software, and explains why that matters most for Linux users who never got a native Affinity build.
03:40 – 05:15
02 · How to install
Windows and Mac get a two-click installer from the GitHub releases page, which updates faster than the project's own website. On Linux there's no package yet, so the host clones the repo and compiles it with the Rust toolchain.
05:15 – 10:45
03 · VectorCraft: testing the Illustrator alternative
Boolean operations, gradients, and text-to-path conversion all work. Drag-and-drop import is broken, and individual path anchor points can't be moved, but the host calls it the most usable clone he's tried yet.
10:45 – 16:54
04 · EffectCraft: building it and tracking by hand
Compiled from source on Linux, EffectCraft lists an After Effects-sized feature set. The host imports a DaVinci Resolve proxy clip, grades flat V-Log footage, and gets the built-in motion tracker locked onto his face, but can't manually link the tracker's output to an effect.
16:54 – 20:53
05 · Claude Code takes the wheel via MCP
EffectCraft exposes a first-party MCP server that Claude Code auto-detects on opening the project folder. One spoken request chains three steps: convert the V-Log footage to Rec. 709, retrack the face, and add on-screen text. Claude Code can even read back the tracker's raw feature-point data.
20:53 – 22:41
06 · Verdict
Not a replacement for a professional Adobe workflow yet, since the apps lack the decades of user feedback Adobe has absorbed. But reaching this far as free, open source software a week into development is the real headline.
Atomic Insights
Lines worth screenshotting.
ArtCraft is rebuilding all seven major Adobe apps as clean-room reimplementations in pure Rust, not cracked copies of the originals.
Clean-room reimplementation means the team never saw Adobe's source code: they studied what each app does and rebuilt the functionality from scratch.
Rust compiles to a single cross-platform binary, so these clones are the first real options Linux users have had for Adobe-grade creative software.
Affinity, the usual Adobe alternative, never shipped a Linux version in over a decade, which is exactly the gap these Rust clones fill.
The ArtCraft GitHub repos ship a new build roughly every 24 hours, so a missing feature on Monday can be gone by Wednesday.
VectorCraft can unite and subtract shapes with working boolean operations, but it won't let you grab and move an individual anchor point on a path.
EffectCraft's built-in motion tracker locked onto a moving face in seconds, even on a low-resolution proxy file, with no visible stutter.
EffectCraft ships a first-party MCP server, so Claude Code can see and drive the app's internal tools, not just imitate clicks on its interface.
Claude Code could read back the tracker's actual numeric feature points, which is a deeper level of access than most MCP integrations expose.
One spoken request to Claude Code chained three steps the host couldn't finish by hand: convert V-Log footage to Rec. 709, retrack a face, and add text.
The presenter's verdict is that these apps have no shot at replacing a professional Adobe workflow yet, because they're missing the decades of user feedback Adobe has absorbed.
Even in alpha, a free, open source, cross-platform Adobe suite rebuilt in a single week changes the calculus for anyone priced out of Creative Cloud.
Takeaway
A clone that can't be clicked through got finished by an AI that could read it.
WHAT TO LEARN
A week-old open source Rust rebuild of After Effects gets further than its own UI lets you go, because its built-in MCP server hands Claude Code the exact internal data a human has to hunt for manually.
01What is this?
ArtCraft is rebuilding all seven major Adobe apps as clean-room reimplementations in pure Rust, not cracked copies of the originals.
Clean-room reimplementation means studying what an app does and rebuilding the functionality without ever seeing its source code.
Rust compiles to one cross-platform binary, which is why these clones are the first real Adobe-grade option Linux users have had.
02How to install
The ArtCraft GitHub repos ship a new build roughly every 24 hours, so check the releases page rather than the project website, which lags behind.
Windows and Mac installers are a two-click download; Linux users currently have to clone the repo and compile it with the Rust toolchain themselves.
03VectorCraft: testing the Illustrator alternative
VectorCraft can unite and subtract shapes with working boolean operations and convert any shape or text to an editable path.
It won't let you grab and move an individual anchor point on a path, one of the most basic things a vector tool needs to do.
Even with that bug, the host calls VectorCraft the most usable clone he's tried across two videos of testing.
04EffectCraft: building it and tracking by hand
EffectCraft lists an After Effects-sized feature set, including 3D channel effects, immersive video tools, and full color correction, not a stripped-down subset.
Drag-and-drop import didn't work; the host had to import a DaVinci Resolve proxy file through EffectCraft's own file picker instead.
Built-in color correction and a basic contrast boost were enough to pull flat log footage into a watchable state.
The built-in motion tracker locked onto a moving face in seconds on a low-res proxy, but manually linking the tracker's output to an effect failed.
05Claude Code takes the wheel via MCP
EffectCraft ships a first-party MCP server, and Claude Code auto-detected it the moment the project folder was opened.
One spoken request chained three steps Claude Code handled on its own: convert V-Log footage to Rec. 709, retrack the face, and add on-screen text.
Claude Code could read back the tracker's actual numeric feature points, meaning the MCP exposes internal data, not just menu commands.
The exact task that failed by hand, linking a tracker to an effect, was the task Claude Code completed through the MCP server.
06Verdict
The host's final take: these clones have no shot at replacing a professional's Adobe workflow yet, because they're missing the decades of user feedback Adobe has absorbed.
He's explicit that he isn't rooting for Adobe's downfall. The appeal is open source and free software reaching people who are priced out or stuck on Linux.
A free, open source, cross-platform Adobe suite reaching this level of function after one week in public is the actual headline, alpha bugs and all.
Glossary
Terms worth knowing.
Clean-room reimplementation
Rebuilding a program's functionality from scratch by studying what it does, with no access to its original source code, so the result works similarly without containing any of the original code.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)
A standard that lets a program expose its internal tools and data as a list an AI agent can read and act on, so the AI can operate the app directly instead of imitating mouse clicks.
Rec. 709
The standard color space used for normal video playback. Footage shot in a flat log profile has to be converted to Rec. 709 before it looks correct on screen.
V-Log
Panasonic's flat, low-contrast color profile for recording video, designed to preserve maximum detail for color grading rather than to look correct straight out of the camera.
Proxy file
A smaller, lower-resolution stand-in for a full-resolution video clip, used to keep editing and playback fast until the final export swaps the original footage back in.
Motion tracking
A video effects tool that follows a chosen point across frames automatically, so text, graphics, or other effects can be locked to a moving subject.
Vibe coding
Building software largely by directing an AI coding agent in natural language rather than writing most of the code by hand.
“With these vibe-coded alternatives, we might actually have some viable options for Linux users that are free and open source.”
names the real audience this unlocks→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
16:54
“This is the point where we employ Claude. Yes, I totally trust this folder. I just never looked at it. It's fine.”
funny, honest turning point right before the MCP demo→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote
19:26
“The fact that Claude actually has access to the tracked points is already very, very cool.”
the single clearest statement of why this MCP integration is different→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote
21:03
“Even though you can vibe code and AI can build functionality super quickly, what you don't get is the decades of user feedback that Adobe has.”
the honest caveat that keeps the whole video credible→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote
The Script
Word for word.
Read-along
Don't just watch it. Burn it in.
See every word as it's spoken — crank it to 2× and still catch all of it. The same dual-channel trick behind Amazon's Kindle + Audible.
17px
analogystory
I am unbelievably surprised. This project didn't even exist a week ago. How is it this freaking good?
The world of vibe -coded Adobe app clones is going completely nuts right now. Yesterday, I uploaded a video about this. This is a project by the ArchCraft team, which I've never heard about before, but they're doing some crazy stuff right now.
They basically rebuilt seven Adobe apps, like all of the big ones, which includes Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, there's... After Effects, InDesign, they are rebuilding every single one of those from scratch in Rust, which is just... an insane project.
In my last video, I looked at PhotoCraft, which is their Photoshop alternative. I looked at FilmCraft, which is basically their Premiere Pro clone and LightCraft, which is supposed to be Lightroom. So what I want to try today is EffectCraft, which is their After Effects alternative and VectorCraft, which is basically Adobe Illustrator.
And especially EffectCraft is really interesting because there really aren't that many alternatives to After Effects out there, especially not ones that are open source. And the only real alternative to After Effects that like us mere mortals can use.
I mean, of course, there's like Houdini and stuff like that, but for us mere mortals, I guess the only one is DaVinci Resolve Fusion, which is what I use, but it requires a totally different way of thinking. It's very different from After Effects. So if you're used to After Effects and you want something that has a very similar interface and where the effects work the same and stuff like that, there really aren't any alternatives.
to the actual After Effects. I just want to highlight this because I think it's really important to say, but this is not piracy. These are not actually Adobe apps that have been like cracked or where the licensing has been taken out or something like that.
These are actual clean room reimplementations. So what that means is that without knowing the source code, which is, well, legally impossible because Adobe software is closed source, without having the source code, Somebody looked at the functionality and then tried to rebuild everything to reach that functionality from the ground up without actually knowing what is happening under the hood.
I know a lot of people online are talking about the fact that with AI you can decompile programs very effectively. So basically from the finished program... Can we look at the working internals?
But first off, I'm pretty sure that's illegal. So don't do that. And secondly, these don't really feel like they are one -to -one clones.
So the interface is very similar, but the functionality and stuff like that still feels very different, which is something that I realized in my last video where I tried the other apps. In my last video, the three apps that I tried, I tried them on Windows. But the really interesting thing is that all of these are written completely in pure...
Rust, which can run basically anywhere. And that is great news for Linux users, me included, because we were always left out of pretty much any cool alternative to Adobe apps that has ever existed. For example, Affinity is great.
I've been using Affinity stuff for like 10 years, and they don't have a Linux version. They never had one. So yeah, that kind of...
Sucks. And now with these vibe -coded alternatives, we might actually have some viable options for Linux users that are free and open source. You can download these apps directly from the website, but the thing is, the builds are usually a little bit older than the ones on GitHub, so I would just go to the GitHub repository and...
check out the releases down here so literally like an hour ago there was a new release which is pretty crazy and these are in super super active development they are literally pumping a new build out like every 24 hours which is pretty insane if you're on windows just download the msi file and install that it's like two clicks and if you're on a mac you can download the mac os universal dot dmg and install that like any other mac os app too they are super easy to install and the installers are like shockingly small.
But today I thought I'm going to give it a go on Linux because a lot of people, the thing that is preventing them from switching to Linux is actually their dependence on Adobe software. So I thought it would be really fun to try and give these a go on Linux today. So I'm running CacheOS, which is Arch based.
They don't actually have like any... files for arch i think but what you can just do is clone these to source if you're a linux user you probably know how to do this so you can just clone these to source and then there are instructions here down here yeah and you can literally just run this you need to install the rust dependencies but other than that and that's how fast it starts that's like insane i already had it installed i already installed the dependencies but that's just how fast it starts it's Crazy.
Okay, I'm going to try VectorCraft first because that's the one I already had installed now. I used to be a freelance designer and I used to use Illustrator, but many years ago I switched to Infinity Designer because it's way, way cheaper than Illustrator and it's very, very capable. So I'm very interested to see how VectorCraft compares to Infinity and Illustrator.
Again, I need to mention these are super, super early mentions. These literally popped up on GitHub like... a week ago so everything you see here can change very quickly and they've been going at an insane pace so if you're watching this like maybe three weeks down the line or maybe a few months this could already look completely different and be in a completely different state okay can i just drag and drop my logo svg i don't think that works for some reason that's already a bad start Okay, I don't know why you can't drag and drop, but you can import it through open, which is interesting.
Pen tool, yes, with P. Make a new layer and make a new thing. So wait, I'm just gonna make something.
A toilet, yes. This is now a toilet. And can we edit the fill?
Who's Phil? Just kidding. Sorry.
But okay, at least here, these points show up. They didn't on my logo. path for whatever reason okay this works too they show up here too can i do booleans oh yes i can unite can i do minus front i can awesome this is a wireless toilet bowl now this is where the water is wireless water tank and then it just flushes perfect i don't know there are like a few oddities okay i'm also very rusty with illustrator shortcuts because i'm just used to using affinity designer which i've used for like the past 10 years or so so i'm i might just it might just be me but the points of the path don't show up unless like when i just click nothing happens and if i control click then they show up but I still can't move an individual point.
I can just like change the curve, but it doesn't show these like handles that usually appear to edit a curve. Hello, subscribe to FUTC. Okay, here I can select a hex color.
I'm just gonna give it my favorite color. love dbae 29 that i'm gonna find oh here okay oh there's text stuff here that's great we can oh i don't want to add a new one i just want to edit this one okay we can add tracking and kerning i always forget which one is which somebody in the comments will probably tell me but this is great i can do bold i can change the font to pomodoro which is either something you do for 25 minutes at a time or it's pasta sauce it's just tomatoes the important question is can i now turn this into a path because that's something you do a bajillion times oh yes Designers around the world are happy.
If I could now figure out how to properly edit these anchor points, that would be great. So I can delete them, but I still can't move them for whatever reason. Like I can do this.
But now we can do more Boolean stuff maybe by making our wireless toilet wider and then selecting this and this and then doing minus front again. Wow. Incredible.
Incredible. Okay, this now, this doesn't need to have a stroke anymore. This is actually very usable.
I'm surprised. This is surprisingly usable. Can I add a gradient?
No, not as the stroke, as the fill. It was fill. No, wait, I already did that one.
Yes, I can. Can I add more points to the gradient? Oh, we can do sunset.
That's cool. This is getting uglier and uglier by the minute. I swear, I'm a great designer.
I just forgot how to do everything once AI came around. No, I'm kidding. I'm still smart, I swear.
Oh, okay, yeah, I can add a point here. Change the color. Yes, that's great.
We can make it even uglier. That's perfect. That's exactly what designers do.
They just make a new project and then start making things uglier. What is this? Okay, oh, okay, okay, wait.
I think I accidentally made two points. I thought I was tripping. I was like, that's not a gradient.
Can I remember? this again i can okay this is this is surprisingly usable this is very much usable i would say like for just like basic vector stuff except for the fact that i cannot figure out how to change no that's not it i can't figure out how to move around points in a path which is very frustrating because that's all you do as a designer you move points around oh look a vector what if i move this point and boom you're a designer and you just think about that very very hard all day and i don't i can't figure out how to do it maybe i'm just being an idiot i don't know but um yeah other than that this is surprisingly usable like the other ones i tried were pretty good but This is probably the most usable one I've tried yet.
But the thing is that also like since yesterday, I think a bajillion things have already changed because this repo, like they're just all the AI agents in there are just going absolute ham right now. So these are changing like by the hour. We even have actions.
That's very cool. Okay, let's throw all of this away. I am so excited to try the next one, Effect Craft, which is supposed to be After Effects, and After Effects is a very, very complicated program, so I am super interested in seeing if this works even remotely like After Effects does.
If we can actually get some, like, tracking working or something like that, that would be pretty insane. The only problem is that the last time I used After Effects was, like... seven years ago, and I was pretty decent at After Effects, but I'm gonna be honest, I forgot absolutely everything.
I have no idea anymore how to use After Effects. I know how to use DaVinci Resolve Fusion, but that's not what this video is about. But I do have an idea, because one interesting thing about all of these apps in this Archcraft suite is that they have first -party support for MCP servers.
MCPs are basically a way to connect... programs to AI. So you're giving AI a way to look at a program because they're not that great at looking at user interfaces like we humans do and clicking around, though AI is getting better at that.
But what AI can do really well is look at a list of text and then select what to do. That's basically what MCPs are, just very rudimentary. The thing is not a lot of applications have MCP support because you actually need to expose those options for another program like an AI to do stuff and actually control the program through that MCP.
So there has to be some stuff implemented on the developer end, which not a lot of programs are doing. Or in some cases, there are programs who can then expose those options to AI. But in this case, it's actually one of their features that are implemented straight from the ground up in this rust.
pure Rust rebuild, so it's pretty interesting to see apps that, just like from the get -go, now implement MCPs with the idea that AI can then control those apps. Okay, so first off, we're gonna git clone effectcraft, then do that, and now we're just gonna run it, and hopefully it works. we're compiling we're compiling my 64 threads are hopefully working okay we can just put that over here yes fast computer go brr go computer go go computer go again all of these steps you don't need to do them when you're on a mac or on a windows computer because you can literally just download the installer and install it this is just something we have to do on some linux distros for now if you don't know what that means ignore everything i said okay new composition Yes, let's just do 1080p.
Sure, why not? Oh, now I need footage. Okay, I got some drone footage from my NAS.
Let's see if I can use that. Again, dragging and dropping doesn't work. But interestingly enough, under import, it says you can import an Adobe Premiere Pro project.
That's very cool. if that works because that's the same thing you can do in after effects it still won't let me import yeah this is a standard h .264 file i don't know why it won't show up in the file picker and i literally i cannot drag and drop something i think that might be an issue with hyperland i don't think that's an issue with effect craft to be honest that might be on my end okay i could import this automatically generated proxy file from DaVinci Resolve for some reason.
We have a full preview. It works. You can see like how it's rendering parts of the video, how it's buffering that.
That's crazy. That's very cool. Okay.
Now I need to remember how to use After Effects. Okay, ideally I want to track something. I just want to add a tracker and try to track some point in the video.
There are so many effects. 3D channel, audio blur and sharpen, there's color correction, there's immersive video for VR effects. That's pretty crazy for stereoscopic video.
Noise and grain, perspective simulation. That's crazy. There is so much stuff here.
That's actually very, very surprising. I mean, I guess they just took the whole feature list from After Effects and just went at it. So I guess it makes sense.
I'm still surprised. Can I add color correction? Oh, there's Lumetri Color.
that's crazy oh there's easy warm film unfortunately this is log footage so it's gonna look like crap i don't know why i can't select to input a lot file that would actually be very cool i can try to just like make this look less crappy by just giving it some contrast and a bit of color not a real rec 709 conversion but at least it looks less horrible so that's already a good start okay it looks a little bit more like i'm a human instead of a gray blob so that's good that's all i need we're gonna check now if i can actually animate something or track something track motion yes warp stabilizer i barely know her oh my god okay track motion let's try that okay wait i have a point here can i now track my nose do i just analyze forward oh my god it's working things are happening that was very fast okay yes okay i actually do need to also track in the other direction that is so fast okay this clip is also a render down proxy so it's supposed to be fast but this works this is tracking the center of my nose this is very impressive i did not expect that we could get like working tracking that's crazy that is actually nuts again this is not perfect by any means but as a starting point because again these
repositories on github are like a week old as a starting point this is crazy and i can't wait to see where this goes in like six months subscribe or i will hide a break in your cereal can i now like link this to the tracker i forgot how to do this you need to take this like loop -de -loop right everybody he was like an after effects pro just like screaming at me you need to put the loop -de -loop on the thingamajig oh wait i was i was dragging the wrong one no that still didn't work okay you know what this is the point where we employ claude yes i totally trust this folder i just i never looked at it it's fine oh it automatically sees the mcp servers in the folder that's very very cool okay yes enable selected okay wait let me just speech to text this can you see the mcp server for effect craft and do stuff in it can you Test that, please.
I say please in case the AI overlords knock on my door and ask me things, which is going to happen sooner or later. Look, I know it doesn't make that much sense to say thanks. It's just an LLM.
It's just a model that predicts tokens. But then on the other hand, it doesn't cost me anything. And the upside of not dying is much larger than the downside of just having to say two extra words.
I mean, it's in the Bible. Thank thy parents and thank thy Claude Code. agent sure buddy just do your best i did that for the meme i've got a computer science degree okay don't come at me okay wait we've got another instance it's working i think it's working wait let's just close this project and see if we can get this running with the with just the mcp i love when opus 5 .5 goes hello from claude okay this got creepy real fast okay let's drop it in can you see the file that I put in Comp 3, the video file.
Can you track my nose in it? No, wait, actually, first convert it to Rec. 709.
It's Panasonic V -Log. And then track my nose and add the text subscribe to FUTC. Oh, it converted it to Rec.
709? I mean, the preview is still horrendous quality. What is going on with my hand here?
What? is it like blending between two frames what is happening here okay yeah this proxy file is also horrendous quality but it's the only thing i could import for whatever reason i'm still not sure why here i am a software developer doing nothing other than staring at my computer waiting for the computer to do the thinking for me on the one side what a time to be alive on the other side what have i done with my life oh my god i think it did it okay claude is checking the tracked points which in itself is already Insane.
The fact that Claude actually has access to the tracked points is already very, very cool. Because that means that EffectCraft is not only exposing access to tools and effects or whatever, it's actually exposing, like, internal information from the effects, which is very, very cool. Okay, did this work?
Oh my god, it worked. Buffering, man, that's what, that's crazy. Like, not only the fact that it can do this stuff, but the fact that it's like...
got an MCP with low -level information being accessible to AI agents is pretty freaking cool. Again, I don't think this will replace After Effects anytime soon for real professionals. But I think for like playing around, this is already very, very cool.
And I'm very excited to see where this goes in the next six months. I am unbelievably surprised. This project didn't even exist a week ago.
How is it this freaking good? Man, that's insane. Claude even was able to convert it to Rec.
709. That's what it applied a lot. I don't know where it got the lot from, but I'm not going to ask.
He's got his sources. OK, yeah, this is crazy. We got the full tracking.
Very like surprisingly. accurate tracking super fast performance this does not stutter okay the video clip is is low res and whatever it's it's a proxy it's built to be fast but still this is shocking okay one thing i do want to say is that i don't think these are super close to replacing adobe for like professionals or whatever these still have a very long way to go because even though you can vibe code and AI can build functionality super quickly, what you don't get is just like the user feedback and the decades of user feedback and testing that Adobe has.
And I don't think Adobe really is shaking in their boots right now because they have a very loyal customer base. of professionals that know exactly how to use that software and can do it super fast to get their job done. And I'm also definitely not preying on Adobe's downfall or whatever.
I'm just here because I think this is a very interesting project and I always want to advocate for open source and free software. Because even though the entire open source scene has changed a lot over the past few years with AI, I still think that open source inherently is a very very good thing.
And I'm always going to advocate for that. And again, these apps are in very early alpha. So judging any of this and just taking it at face value is actually pretty silly because these are so early in development.
I'm just still shook how. far they are this early in their development cycle. And I think if we see these improve more and more and get to a point where they are robust and usable, these could be a very good open source alternative for people who maybe can't run the Adobe software on their Linux computer or people who literally just can't afford that type of software otherwise.
Okay, if you want to see me try the other apps, the Photoshop alternative, the Lightroom alternative and the Premiere Pro alternative, then check out my last video. It's linked right here. Okay.
That's it for me today. See you in the next one. Bye -bye.
The Hook
The bait, then the rug-pull.
The video opens on disbelief and closes on the same line, because by the end a Rust clone of After Effects that didn't exist a week ago is tracking the host's face and converting color spaces on Claude Code's spoken instructions alone.
Frameworks
Named ideas worth stealing.
01:50concept
Clean-room reimplementation
No access to Adobe's source code
Study the app's observed functionality
Rebuild the same functionality from scratch
FUTC explains these aren't cracked Adobe apps. The ArtCraft team studied what each program does and rebuilt it without ever touching the original code, which is why the interface rhymes with Adobe's but the internals and quirks don't.
Steal forany pitch defending a from-scratch competitor build against IP concerns
11:27concept
MCP as an AI control surface
The app exposes its internal tools and options as readable text
An AI agent reads that list and decides what to do
The AI calls the exposed option directly, with no UI clicking involved
AI isn't great at parsing a visual interface the way a human is, but it's very good at reading a list of options and picking one. A program that exposes its functions as an MCP server gives an AI agent a reliable way to operate it instead of guessing at pixels.
Steal forany product team deciding whether an MCP server is worth building
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