Claude Rebuilt Every Adobe App in 10 Days. I Tested Them.
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Author: Hyperautomation Labs · Watch on YouTube
Video authored by the channel shown, not by IANIA; all rights belong to the creator. Transcript and summary generated automatically; the original-language content is preserved.
Original language: English
Original video: Claude Rebuilt Every Adobe App in 10 Days. I Tested Them. · Channel: Hyperautomation Labs · 07:04 · Watch on YouTube
Topics: AI agents, Task and workflow automation, AI content generation, Open source and software ecosystems
Summary
Section titled “Summary”The video tests a suite of free, open-source creative and productivity apps built by engineer and filmmaker Brandon Thomas with extensive help from Claude. The presenter finds Photo Craft and Light Craft usable for common editing tasks, while Film Craft shows promising export speed but still stutters during playback. A key feature is that the apps include MCP servers, allowing Claude to operate them and complete tasks such as editing photos and processing PDFs. The apps are very new, so the presenter warns viewers to use official downloads and back up their files.
Key points
Section titled “Key points”- Brandon Thomas began a project to rebuild Photoshop from scratch as a free, open-source app, using Rust and Claude.
- The project uses a clean-room approach based on public file formats and observing how the original apps behave, rather than Adobe code.
- The video reports 12 apps, over 6,800 commits in 10 days, and almost 2 million downloads.
- Photo Craft preserved editable layers, text, and effects when saving and reopening a PSD test file.
- Light Craft opened raw files from Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, and Google Pixel cameras and imported a Lightroom preset.
- Film Craft handled a 4K timeline but dropped about one frame in 10 at half resolution; its export of 28 seconds of 4K footage took under 25 seconds.
- Each app includes an MCP server, allowing Claude to control app functions and automate tasks.
- Claude combined and edited PDFs, removed an internal note, and checked that the note was gone; it also edited and resized five photos in 43 seconds.
- The apps are very new and may break, so the presenter recommends downloading only from official GitHub releases and backing up files.
Chapters
Section titled “Chapters”| Start | Chapter | Summary |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | The project and its ambitious goal | The presenter introduces the free app suite and explains how Brandon Thomas and Claude set out to rebuild Photoshop from scratch. |
| 01:36 | Progress, scale, and downloads | The video describes the project’s rapid development, Photoshop file tests, growing commit count, and availability across operating systems. |
| 02:41 | Testing Photo Craft, Light Craft, and Film Craft | The presenter tests image editing, raw photo processing, presets, and 4K video editing, noting both useful features and playback stutters. |
| 04:50 | Claude controls the apps | Using MCP servers, Claude processes PDFs and edits a folder of photos, demonstrating how the apps can be operated through natural-language instructions. |
| 05:56 | Other apps, caveats, and closing | The presenter lists more apps in the suite, cautions that they are new and should be downloaded safely, and invites viewers to follow and suggest future tests. |
Quotes
Section titled “Quotes”So this is a clean room build, zero Adobe code. — 01:05
For everyday work, cutouts, curves, text, and styles, this is usable today. — 03:14
It mostly keeps up, but it dropped about one frame in 10 at half resolution. — 04:17
The AI didn’t just build a free Photoshop. It built a Photoshop that AI can use. — 05:23
Only download from the official GitHub releases page because fakes always follow anything this popular. — 05:56
Concepts and entities
Section titled “Concepts and entities”Claude, Brandon Thomas, ArtCraft, Adobe, PhotoCraft, Lightcraft, Film Craft, PDF Craft, MCP, Rust, GitHub, DaVinci Resolve
Full transcript (original language)
Section titled “Full transcript (original language)”00:00 Every month, $70 leaves your account just so you can keep opening Photoshop. Stop [music] paying and the app that opens your own files stops working. 10 days ago at 6:00 in the morning, one guy typed two words into a new project in it repo. Today there’s a free Photoshop, a free Lightroom, Premiere, Illustrator, Acrobat, After Effects, InDesign. And then he kept going, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pro Tools, even AutoCAD. 12
00:33 apps, almost 2 million downloads, and the name on hundreds of the commits isn’t a person, it’s Claude. I installed four of them and threw real files at them. Some of it honestly shocked me. One of them still stutters and there’s one thing here Adobe doesn’t give you. You can tell Claude to do the work for you. His name is Brandon Thomas. He’s an engineer and a filmmaker and he runs a small company called ArtCraft that makes AI tools for artists. On September 30th, he started a project with a strange
01:05 goal, to rebuild Photoshop one-to-one. Same menus, same shortcuts, same files, but free, open source, and written from scratch in a fast language called Rust. You can’t just copy Adobe, their code is locked away. So this is a clean room build, zero Adobe code. Everything is rebuilt from public file formats and from watching how the real app behaves. That kind of work normally takes a team years. He didn’t have years, he had Claude. Open the project and the first file isn’t for humans. It’s a rulebook
01:36 written for AI agents. What to build, how to test it, and what never to touch. Then look at the history, commit after commit signed, co-authored by Claude. On day one, PhotoCraft could do about a third of Photoshop’s menus. 24 hours later, 85%. Today, all 627 menu items are wired up. Wired up isn’t the same as perfect, and their own road map says so. But, is it real? They tested it against more than 300 real Photoshop files, save
02:09 them back out, and 307 of 309 still look right. Across 12 apps, that’s more than 6,800 commits in 10 days, one every 2 minutes, day and night. For the video editor, they even wrote their own video decoders from scratch. And when Adobe was done, they moved on to Microsoft Office, Pro Tools, and AutoCAD. 76,000 stars on GitHub, almost 2 million downloads. So, I downloaded them, too. Every app is a normal download for Mac, Windows, and Linux, and I checked. The
02:41 Mac versions are signed and notarized by Apple. So, they open like any other app. Photocraft first, the Photoshop one. I open a photo from NASA’s archive and hit select subject. It grabbed the astronaut and a chunk of the Earth, too. One box fixes it, the same way you’d do it in Photoshop. Paste him into the famous Earthrise photo, scale him down, and add a curves adjustment layer. Type a headline, then open layer style, drop shadow, >> [music] >> stroke. This dialogue is basically the one you already know.
03:14 Save it as a PSD, close it, open it again. Every layer is still there. The text is still editable, and the effects are still live. I even checked the file with a separate PSD reader, and it agrees. For everyday work, cutouts, curves, text, and styles, this is usable today. Lightcraft is the Lightroom one. I import five raw files from four camera brands, Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, and a Google Pixel. Every one of them opens, not the little preview hidden inside the file, the real raw data.
03:46 Exposure up, shadows up, highlights down. The sliders you already know. Then I import a Lightroom preset file. It lands in the presets panel with every setting mapped and nothing skipped. One click and it’s applied. Before and after. Export. If you mostly sort and grade photos, this might already be enough. Film Craft is the premier one and it’s the boldest because they wrote the video decoders themselves.
04:17 Four clips of NASA’s 4K footage go on a 4K timeline. A color preset, a zoom keyframe, a title. Then I hit play. It mostly keeps up, but it dropped about one frame in 10 at half resolution. You can feel it. Export is a different story. 28 seconds of 4K came out in under 25 using the Mac’s video hardware. So not the editor I’d cut a client job in yet. If you need a free one today, DaVinci Resolve is still the safer pick. But for something 10 days old, give it a month.
04:50 Now here’s the part nobody’s talking about. Every button in these apps is a command and every app ships with an MCP server. That’s the plug that lets Claude use the app for you. PDF Craft, the Acrobat one, and Claude 140 tools. So I gave Claude two PDFs and one request. Combine them, fill in the client form, blackout the internal note, lock it with a password. 25 seconds later it was done and it checked its own work. It reopened the file and searched for the note to make sure it was really gone.
05:23 I open it in PDF Craft. It asks for the password. The form is filled in and the internal note isn’t hidden. It’s removed. Same with Photo Craft. One sentence. Fix the levels, add some vibrance, and resize every photo in this folder. Five photos done in 43 seconds. That’s the real story here. The AI didn’t just build a free Photoshop. It built a Photoshop that AI can use. The rest are earlier, but they’re real. Vector Craft for Illustrator, Effect Craft for After Effects, Design Craft
05:56 for InDesign, and the newest batch only 3 days old, Word Craft, Grid Craft, and Deck Craft for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, Sound Craft for Pro Tools, CAD Craft for AutoCAD. The catch, these are days old and things break. Only download from the official GitHub releases page because fakes always follow anything this popular. And back up your files before you test. But stop and think about what just happened. Software that took decades and thousands of engineers was rebuilt from scratch by a small team and an AI in 10 days. And
06:30 it’s free. I put all 12 apps on one sheet, what each one replaces, what worked, and what broke in my tests, the official download links, and how to plug Claude into them. Comment Craft [music] and I’ll send it to you. Real talk, 90% of you watching haven’t subscribed. On Facebook, subscribe is the supporter button. That is what keeps the lights on here. On YouTube, it’s free and it tells the algorithm to send you more. Subscribe to support us. At this speed, next week’s version of
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