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Jay E | RoboNuggets · YouTube

Someone Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run All of It

ArtCraft cloned seven Adobe apps from scratch in Rust, open-sourced the code, and built them so Claude Code can drive every one.

Posted

October 8th

2 days ago

Duration

08:38

Format

Demo

educational

Views

279.4K

4.8K likes

Big Idea

The argument in one line.

ArtCraft used Claude Opus 5.5 to build legal, open-source, clean-room clones of seven Adobe apps in Rust, and because each one ships a CLI and an AGENTS.md handbook, Claude Code can drive the software directly instead of only generating a finished file.

Who This Is For

Read if. Skip if.

READ IF YOU ARE…

You use Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, or Acrobat regularly and don't love paying for Adobe's subscription.
You're building AI-agent workflows and want creative tools your agent can actually operate, not just prompt for a single output.
You want layer-by-layer control over AI-generated images, video, or page design instead of a one-shot result you can't adjust.

SKIP IF…

You've never used Adobe's apps and have no baseline to judge how close these clones get.
You only need single-prompt AI image or video generation, not an editable project file.

TL;DR

The full version, fast.

ArtCraft, a group using Claude Opus 5.5, built clean-room, open-source rebuilds of seven Adobe apps in Rust: PhotoCraft (Photoshop), FilmCraft (Premiere), EffectCraft (After Effects), VectorCraft (Illustrator), DesignCraft (InDesign), LightCraft (Lightroom), and PDFCraft (Acrobat). Because it's a clean-room reimplementation rather than reverse-engineered code, it's legally distinct from Adobe's software. Every app is free at getartcraft.com or on GitHub, and each ships a CLI plus an AGENTS.md handbook so Claude Code can drive it directly from a single prompt. Tests inside EffectCraft and DesignCraft show Claude producing real first drafts, but the reviewer's conclusion is that one-shot AI generation still wins on first-draft quality while layered software stays easier to refine by hand.

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Chapters

Where the time goes.

00:00 – 00:16

01 · Intro

Claim stated: Claude-built, open-source clones of Photoshop, Premiere, After Effects, Illustrator, InDesign, Lightroom, and Acrobat.

00:16 – 01:11

02 · Clean room

Defines clean-room reimplementation, explains why building from scratch in Rust keeps ArtCraft legally clear of Adobe, and points to getartcraft.com and the GitHub repo.

01:11 – 01:51

03 · PhotoCraft

Hands-on tour of the Photoshop clone: text editing, effects panel, layer styles, already at 20,000 GitHub stars hours after launch.

01:51 – 02:23

04 · FilmCraft

Tour of the Premiere Pro clone: timeline zoom, clip scaling and positioning, familiar editing shortcuts.

02:23 – 03:28

05 · EffectCraft

Tour of the After Effects clone, called the hardest app to replicate: sparks layers, lens flares, motion graphics capability.

03:28 – 04:09

06 · The other 4 apps

Quick pass through VectorCraft (Illustrator), DesignCraft (InDesign), LightCraft (Lightroom), and PDFCraft (Acrobat).

04:09 – 06:27

07 · Can Claude drive them?

Tests whether Claude Code can operate the apps directly: one prompt builds a full logo animation in EffectCraft and a magazine layout in DesignCraft, enabled by each app's CLI and AGENTS.md handbook.

06:27 – 08:16

08 · Is there still a need?

Weighs layered editing software against one-shot AI generation models: AI creation gives great first drafts that are hard to refine, manual tools give weaker first drafts that are much easier to refine.

08:16 – 08:38

09 · Wrap up

Credits ArtCraft for shipping seven apps at once, recommends trying them, closes with a subscribe ask.

Atomic Insights

Lines worth screenshotting.

ArtCraft rebuilt seven Adobe apps from scratch in Rust using Claude Opus 5.5, then open-sourced the code for free.
A clean-room reimplementation means the team wrote the software from a functional spec instead of reverse-engineering Adobe's code, which keeps the clones legally distinct from the originals.
PhotoCraft, the open-source Photoshop clone, hit 20,000 GitHub stars within a few hours of launch.
Every ArtCraft app ships with a CLI and an AGENTS.md handbook, so AI agents like Claude Code can read the file and learn to drive the software.
A single Claude Code prompt inside EffectCraft generated a complete 8-second logo animation with fully editable layers.
Claude also built a full magazine-style page layout inside DesignCraft, the InDesign clone, from one prompt.
The core tradeoff: single-prompt AI generation gives great first drafts but is hard to refine, while layered creative software gives weaker first drafts but is much easier to refine.
For longer video work, driving an After Effects clone with Claude for a first draft beats hand-animating every layer, even though one-shot video models can already generate short clips directly.
Because the project is open source, the people most likely to contribute improvements are themselves AI-agent users, which should make future versions even more agent-friendly.
All seven apps are free to download at getartcraft.com/apps or clonable directly from github.com/storytold.

Takeaway

Claude can drive real creative software

AGENT-DRIVEN CREATIVE TOOLS

ArtCraft's free, open-source Adobe clones are legally clean because they're built from scratch, and they let an AI agent operate the software, not just generate a file.

02Clean room

A clean-room reimplementation is built from a functional spec derived from studying the original, never from its code, which is what keeps ArtCraft legally distinct from Adobe.
All seven apps are free at getartcraft.com/apps, or clone the source directly from github.com/storytold and point your own coding agent at it.

03PhotoCraft

PhotoCraft, the Photoshop clone, hit 20,000 GitHub stars within hours of launch, a sign of how much demand exists for a free alternative.
Core Photoshop workflows (text editing, the effects panel, layer styles) already work despite the app being only days old.

04FilmCraft

FilmCraft replicates core Premiere Pro editing moves: timeline zoom, clip scaling, position control, and familiar keyboard shortcuts, entirely free.

05EffectCraft

EffectCraft, the hardest app to clone because of After Effects' complexity, already supports layered motion graphics work like spark effects and lens flares.

06The other 4 apps

VectorCraft (Illustrator), DesignCraft (InDesign), LightCraft (Lightroom), and PDFCraft (Acrobat) round out the suite, each free and open source.
DesignCraft is tuned specifically for magazine-style page layouts, where InDesign is most commonly used.

07Can Claude drive them?

Every ArtCraft app ships a CLI plus an AGENTS.md handbook, so an AI agent can read the file and learn which commands and features to use.
A single Claude Code prompt built a complete 8-second logo animation in EffectCraft, with every layer left editable afterward, and a full magazine-style layout in DesignCraft the same way.

08Is there still a need?

One-shot AI generation models give great first drafts but are hard to refine toward an exact final look.
Layered software like these Adobe clones gives weaker first drafts when an agent drives them, but is much easier to refine because you get layer-by-layer control.
Being open source means the people most likely to contribute improvements are themselves AI-agent users, so expect future versions to get even more agent-friendly.

Glossary

Terms worth knowing.

Clean room implementation: A legal and engineering method for recreating a product's functionality from scratch, using only a specification derived from studying the original, without copying its code, which avoids infringing the original's copyrights or trade secrets.
AGENTS.md: A markdown file a project includes specifically for AI agents to read, acting as a handbook that explains which tools and features the agent should use to operate the software.
Rust: A systems programming language known for performance and memory safety, used here to build all seven ArtCraft apps as native software rather than web apps.
CLI (command-line interface): A text-based way to control software with typed commands instead of clicking through a graphical interface, which is how AI agents drive these apps.

Resources

Things they pointed at.

00:45toolArtCraft apps ↗

00:54linkArtCraft GitHub (storytold) ↗

04:37productRUBRIC ↗

Quotables

Lines you could clip.

00:20

“If we're talking about a clean room reimplementation, that essentially means that they didn't take Adobe software and reverse engineer it... they rebuilt it from scratch, which means that it is perfectly legal in this case.”

explains the legal angle in one breath→ TikTok hook↗ Tweet quote

00:54

“Photocraft here already has 20,000 stars only a few hours after they launched.”

concrete, surprising number→ IG reel cold open↗ Tweet quote

06:59

“I find that it's much harder to refine for you to get to the final result and look that you want... it is actually much harder to polish.”

names the real limitation of one-shot AI generation→ newsletter pull-quote↗ Tweet quote

12:11

“If you are into creative work, then this is definitely worth checking out, especially since it is open source and free.”

clean closing recommendation→ TikTok hook↗ 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.

metaphoranalogy

Someone just used Claude to rebuild all of Adobe's products and open sourced it for free for anyone to use. So they have a version of Photoshop called PhotoCraft. Adobe Premiere is FilmCraft.

Adobe After Effects is EffectCraft. And then they also have open source versions for Lightroom, InDesign, Adobe Acrobat, and Illustrator. And this is all coming from this group called Artcraft, who said that they use Opus 5 .5 to make clean room reimplementations of Adobe software written purely from scratch using this coding language called Rust.

And in case that's the first time you heard of that term, it's quite important in this context, because if we're talking about a clean room reimplementation, that essentially means that they didn't take Adobe software and reverse engineer it. But what they're claiming is that they rebuilt it from scratch, which means that it is perfectly legal in this case.

And for you to try out these products, all you need to do is to go to getartcraft .com slash apps, and you'll be able to download the current versions of all these software completely for free. Or if you prefer, since all of this code is open source, you can actually just go to their GitHub, which is at github .com slash storytold.

And you can just point your cloud code to this repo and grab the ones that you need. So you can see Photocraft here already has 20 ,000 stars only a few hours after they launched. And if I just open Photocraft here, like you can see, this is a pretty sophisticated clone or copy of Photoshop, right?

You would have all of the functionality that you would expect. And at least a lot of the shortcuts that I think I may be used to are already here. So if we want to go and edit this text, we can definitely do that.

If I go to the effects panel that is also available for us and all these layer styles, if you've ever used Photoshop, this would be familiar to you. And overall, for something that's probably only a few days old and with only a few weeks development, like a lot of the features of Photoshop that you would expect are already here.

Obviously, it's not a perfect replica because again, it just released like 24 hours ago, maybe less than 24 hours ago. But if you use Photoshop a lot for your work, then this is definitely worth checking out. It's the same thing with Filmcraft.

which is their Adobe Premiere clone. And here you can see, if I just mute the audio here, a lot of the features that you would expect, like being able to zoom into the timeline and a lot of the shortcuts that I'm also used to are also properly encoded and I guess coded into this program. You would also have the effect controls here where I guess you can size up and scale up the clip if you want.

You can move the position around. So really just from initially looking at it, a lot of the Adobe Premiere features that you're used to is already. built in here and it's entirely for free.

Another Adobe product that I myself have spent some time in is Adobe After Effects. And honestly, amongst all of Adobe's products, I would think Adobe After Effects would be the most complex to vibe code or create because there's so much complexity that they need to build into this thing. Because if you haven't used Adobe After Effects before, essentially there's a lot of things that you can do with this.

If you want to add in effects to your motion graphic animations like these sparks layer, or if you want to add lens flares like these, that's all within the realm of possibilities that you can do with Adobe After Effects. group just vibe coded this whole software to become open source and free And I'll talk more about where this fits into your tool stack, especially with the presence of really powerful models now like Opus 5 .5 and Fable that can actually create videos for you.

And given the fact that you have a lot of really good image models now that can pretty much one -shot posters for us, I still think that within the industry, definitely in the creative industry, there's a lot of space still for products and softwares like these, where you have these individual layers that you can actually edit individually if you need finer tweaks, especially for a lot of production level work.

And just to go quick, through the other softwares that they've released. This is VectorCraft, which is their replacement for Adobe Illustrator, which Illustrator, that's a software that a lot of designers use a lot because that's the main way by which you get these scalable vector graphics, where even if you expand it to multiple scales, it doesn't get pixelated.

So they've definitely captured that here. This is DesignCraft, which is their replacement for InDesign. And mainly this is being used for a lot of magazine spreads because a lot of its functionalities are optimized for that use case.

And finally, you have LightCraft, which is their clone for Lightroom. Oh, and another one is PDFCraft, which is their answer for Adobe Acrobat. So that is also free and open source.

Now, the thing that I was curious about when I first tried these out, because since these are all created using Cloud, then supposedly, whoever the creator is, they probably optimized this so that Cloud and other agentic platforms can use them, right? Well, the good news is that yes, Cloud can absolutely drive these platforms, at least to a degree.

And when I was testing them out, at least initially, you can see I asked Claude to just write a pretty sophisticated prompt in here just to get me to a point where I can actually see what it can do. And for this one, I'm using Effect Craft, which is the Adobe After Effects clone. And that one prompt was actually the one who created this entire animation, along with all of these layers that are now ready for me to edit and refine, if I so wish.

Now, I do realize that a logo animation is probably not the best example, right? Because a video generation model like Kling or C -Dance can easily make these types of animations. And even the latest models now, like Opus 5 .5, which I've covered before, can pretty easily create these HTML videos.

animations right now but you can imagine if you have a need for a much longer video that you will need something like the power of after effects in order to create then trying out this tool which is again open source and free and just have claude create for you a first draft is definitely a much better experience versus you having to create all these layers by hand and animating things yourself another good use case is this one for design craft which is the adobe in design clone.

If you need to do layouts for magazine spreads and the like, you can see this whole thing was created by Claude. So I did not obviously write this myself because I was just testing if Claude can actually drive these software products and create a good first draft for me. And it turns out that it can definitely do that.

And before you get started with letting your AI agents drive the software, you can actually just use this prompt. And you can see that already has the link to where the open source code is located. And the reason why agents can actually drive this is because Artcraft included this CLI, which basically stands for a command line interface tool, which a lot of AI agents really like because it helps them use the software effectively.

They actually include a markdown file, which is this agents .md, which if you just think of that as a handbook that you can have your agents read. And they'll be able to understand and use what are the tools and what are the different features that each of these software pieces have so that they can effectively drive it.

So if you send this prompt to your agent, they'll be able to guide you to install and set these up without any problems. Now, obviously, another question to this is given the fact that Claude and the LACE models like Opus, Sonnet 5 .5, those are really good now when it comes to video creation, all using code. And because you have a lot of generative AI models like Nano, Banana, GPT, Image 2, and Divi.

models like C -Dance that are available in platforms like Higgs Field and KeyAI. Is there still a need for these types of software? And I think that is highly contextual, but in the larger universe of creative work, I definitely think that these are still very relevant.

Because the thing with this subset... which I'm just dubbing as AI creation, most of the time you actually get the final result from just a single prompt. I find that it's much harder to refine for you to get to the final result and look that you want.

And so for this type of creative work, though we're getting a lot of great first drafts now, it is actually much harder to polish. Now, right now, this whole manual creative space where we're using Photoshop or Premiere in order to do creative work, if you ask Claude or an agent to use these platforms, at least from just a couple of tests, they give you somewhat okay versus refs, not always the best.

but they're much easier to refine, especially if you already know and are familiar with these tools, because they actually give you layer by layer control in order to get to the final result that you want. And so I think the main takeaway here is that if you are into creative work, then this is definitely worth checking out, especially since it is open source and free.

And also because it is open source, a lot of people will get interested in this, a lot of people will contribute to it, and it will just only get better over time, especially since these users who are going to contribute to this project. are probably using agents and AI as well. So for sure, the version two or version three of these Artcraft softwares is probably more suited for agents to use as well.

It's the people improving to open source project are probably using agents like Cloud and Covex as well. So there you go. Kudos to Artcraft for releasing these seven pieces of software in one go.

It definitely made waves in the creative community and try them out and let me know what you think. As always, thanks for watching at the end. And if that was useful, then do me a solid and tap subscribe below because that just helps me a lot to put out more educational stuff like this.

And I'll see you all next time. Cheers.

The Hook

The bait, then the rug-pull.

A YouTuber opens with the claim that stops the scroll: someone used Claude to rebuild the entire Adobe suite from scratch and gave it away free. What follows is a hands-on test of whether that claim holds up, and whether Claude can actually operate the software it helped build.

Frameworks

Named ideas worth stealing.

06:43model

AI creation vs. manual creation

AI creation (Nano Banana, Claude): great first drafts now, hard to refine
Manual creation (Photoshop/Premiere-style tools): "ok" first drafts now, easier to refine

A two-column tradeoff the reviewer draws on screen to argue layered creative software still has a place even as one-shot AI generation models improve.

Steal fordeciding when to reach for a one-shot AI generator versus a layered editor on a given creative task

00:16list

The ArtCraft lineup

PhotoCraft = Photoshop
FilmCraft = Premiere Pro
EffectCraft = After Effects
VectorCraft = Illustrator
DesignCraft = InDesign
LightCraft = Lightroom
PDFCraft = Acrobat

Seven clean-room, open-source Rust rebuilds, one per core Adobe app.

Steal forquick reference when picking which free clone replaces which Adobe tool

CTA Breakdown

How they asked for the click.

VERBAL ASK

08:30subscribe

“do me a solid and tap subscribe below because that just helps me a lot to put out more educational stuff like this”

soft, single ask placed after the full educational payload, framed as helping the creator rather than a hard sell

MENTIONED ON CAMERA

00:45toolArtCraft apps ↗

00:54linkArtCraft GitHub (storytold) ↗

04:37productRUBRIC ↗

FROM THE DESCRIPTION

PRIMARY CTAWhere the creator wants you to go next.

AFFILIATECommission earned if you click.

OTHER LINKSAlso linked in the description.

Storyboard

Visual structure at a glance.

open

hookopen00:00

clean room definition

promiseclean room definition00:40

Claude-built animation in EffectCraft

valueClaude-built animation in EffectCraft04:37

CTA / wrap-up

ctaCTA / wrap-up08:30

Frame Gallery

Visual moments.

open

Frame at 00:06 from Someone Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run All of It

Frame at 00:11 from Someone Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run All of It

Frame at 00:21 from Someone Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run All of It

Frame at 00:26 from Someone Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run All of It

Frame at 00:30 from Someone Rebuilt Adobe for Free, and Claude Can Run All of It

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