Developer Uses Claude Opus 5.5 to Recreate Seven Adobe Apps in Open-Source Rust

On October 7, developer @kimmonismus announced that using Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 with a vibe coding approach, he had rebuilt seven core Adobe applications — Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, Acrobat Pro, After Effects, and InDesign — all written in Rust and released as free open source. The case spread quickly through the community and is seen as a landmark demonstration of AI coding's ability to rapidly rewrite mature commercial software suites.

Confirmed

• Project links and a repository roundup have been made public, with the core repo being storytold/photocraft
• PhotoCraft is a pure Rust clean-room open-source clone of Adobe Photoshop under the Apache license
• PhotoCraft supports layers, masks, adjustment layers, layer styles, text, vectors, and brushes, and can read and write real PSD files (with layers and masks)
• PhotoCraft has earned 6.4k stars
• All seven rebuilt apps are open source and free

Why it matters

• Using a single top-tier coding model with vibe coding, the rebuild targets professional productivity software of enormous complexity and engineering scale rather than toy-level demos, showcasing the potential of AI-assisted programming in large-scale software engineering
• Full open sourcing (Rust + Apache license) means the community can continue to audit, verify, and extend these projects
• Several sharers (such as @SumitGup) called it "something really cool is happening," reflecting rising community interest in the feasibility of AI writing mature commercial software

Not yet confirmed

• The actual feature completeness and usability of the rebuilt apps still await independent review; current information mainly comes from the developer and shared posts, with no in-depth third-party testing seen

2026-10-07 ~ 2026-10-07 · 16 related posts

• Dev Recreates All Adobe Apps with Opus 5.5, Ports Them to Rust, Open Sources — SumitGup · 2026-10-07
• PhotoCraft: open-source Rust reimplementation of Photoshop with full PSD support — JosephJacks_ · 2026-10-07
• Dev vibe codes open-source Rust replacements for 7 Adobe apps — alexcovo_eth · 2026-10-07
• [source] Developer uses Opus 5.5 to recreate seven Adobe apps including Photoshop as free open-source Rust alternatives — kimmonismus · 2026-10-07
• [source] photocraft repo: clean-room Rust reimplementation of Photoshop hits 6.4k GitHub stars — kimmonismus · 2026-10-07
• ArtCraft open-sources seven Adobe alternatives built from scratch in Rust, free on all platforms — dotey · 2026-10-07
• Photoshop decompiled and reimplemented in Rust via LLM, sparking closed-source moat debate — JosephJacks_ · 2026-10-07
• Devs are cloning Photoshop in Rust and open-sourcing it — and AI-native tools need rethinking — ravisparikh · 2026-10-07
• AI-built Rust "clean room" Adobe suite clone lets Linux users skip subscriptions — bytebot · 2026-10-07
• AI-powered clean-room reimplementation of Photoshop sparks debate that closed source is dead — latticecut · 2026-10-07
• AI rewrites Adobe's suite in Rust: open-source clones of Photoshop and more hit 90% — AGI Hunt · 2026-10-07
• ArtCraft rebuilds the Adobe suite as free open source; PhotoCraft hits 3,500 stars in under a week — alex_verem · 2026-10-07
• AI reverse-engineers an open-source implementation of the entire Adobe Suite — wen_ragnarok · 2026-10-07
• Dev cracks Adobe, rewrites entire suite and open-sources it — aziz4ai · 2026-10-07

2 near-duplicate retellings: DevDminGod · alex_verem