# One person used AI to rewrite Photoshop, 37k stars in 77 days: how a story lifted PhotoCraft · GitHub open-source projects

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> "One person clones the entire Adobe suite with AI in a week" hit designers who resent Adobe subscriptions, programmers arguing about whether AI can write large software, and investors chanting "software is dead" all at once. Big accounts on X and tech media amplified it to a million views. Photoshop is the most famous of the seven clones, so it got the most stars.

[GitHub open-source project](https://stringers.io/en/github/index.md) · written 11-6

storytold/photocraft · storytold

# One person used AI to rewrite Photoshop, 37k stars in 77 days: how a story lifted PhotoCraft

**What it is** An open-source, free, offline clone of Photoshop written in Rust, with menus and shortcuts matching Photoshop, able to open and save PSD files.

**Why it blew up** The story "one person used AI to clone all of Adobe in a week" hit designers who hate Adobe's subscriptions, programmers arguing over whether AI can write large software, and investors crying "software is dead"; big accounts on X with millions of views and tech media amplified it. Of the seven clones, Photoshop was the most famous, so it got the most stars.

**C** **How you could pursue this** Stop cloning Adobe. Pick a well-known paid tool people resent (a professional industry tool or a domestic subscription app) with a weak open-source alternative, and build a version that matches the original UI one-to-one, reads and writes the original files, and works right away. Pair it with a side-by-side comparison image and proactively send it to X repost accounts and industry media.

Grade C: the playbook is worth learning, but "AI clean-room rewrite of a big-company software" has already been run into the ground by storytold and Puter and widely covered; PhotoCraft's traction came from the author's credentials and from being first to tell the story, which followers can't replicate. Daily star growth has already dropped from 7,184 to about 300, and the topic window probably has only a month or two left. Public / widely discussed

Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-09-30 · 77,702 stars · 7 days +2,161

GitHub · stars

Data 2026-10-01 → 2026-11-08 (39 days, 32 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one

An engineer who spent over a decade writing Rust used Claude Opus 5.5 to rebuild Photoshop from scratch. The interface and shortcuts match the original, it reads and writes PSD, and it's open source, free, and works offline. 37 days later it had 77,165 stars and 13,676 forks, making it one of the fastest-rising repos on GitHub in October. What made it take off was the story "one person with AI cloned all of Adobe in a week," not the photo editing itself. Below: how that story spread, how much heat is left, and which gaps remain if you want to get stars the same way.

### A post that wasn't ready

On the evening of October 4, 202026, someone posted "ArtCraft Apps – open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust" to Hacker News. The author, Brandon Thomas, replied first in the comments: "Haha, I wasn't ready to post this to HN, it's nowhere near usable. These are all very early alphas." The post ended with 180 points and 246 comments.

The comments split quickly. One side said "the scope of this project is just right for testing what people claim about AI writing code" and "three years ago, seeing this would have blown your mind." The other side said "the scrolling is maddening," "I'm sticking with Affinity," and "I don't want to sign up before I can even try a desktop app." One person said they had shorted Adobe stock two days earlier after seeing this software.

PhotoCraft's repo was only 4 days old at that point. It was one of 5 repos ArtCraft created within the same hour (9-30; the other 4 covered PDF, video editing, Lightroom, and vector graphics), and clones of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and AutoCAD followed. Of the seven Adobe clones, PhotoCraft targeted Photoshop, the most famous of them, so it collected the most stars.

### Who is behind it

Thomas is no vibe-coding newcomer. PetaPixel quoted his Reddit comment: "I've been in this industry for 15 years. I've written payment systems that process billions of dollars in trades a day, and I've done robotics and optical automation. I've used Rust for close to ten years." He was previously an engineer at Square and CEO of Storyteller.ai / FakeYou. ArtCraft is an AI creation tool he started about a year ago.

The reason he gave for cloning Adobe is easy to pass on: "They've charged me for cancelled subscriptions more than once, and I've hated them ever since."

Both points became material for the coverage: a credible author, and a grievance everyone can relate to.

### How the stars came in waves

| Date | star | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| 9-30 | Repo created | 5 Craft repos created at once |
| 10-01 | 8 | Almost nobody noticed |
| Early October | — | The author posted "I rebuilt 7 Adobe apps with 100% Rust clean-room" on r/SaaS, r/Bard, and r/ClaudeAI. A post on r/Adobe was removed by the moderators. |
| 10-04 | — | Hacker News 180 points, 246 comments |
| 10-07 | — | Covered by PetaPixel and Ars Technica (headline: "Software is over") |
| 10-08 | — | @DataChaz on X posted "HOLY F*CK, THIS GUY LITERALLY REIMPLEMENTED ALL ADOBE PRODUCTS": 8,800 likes, 355k views |
| 10-09 | 26,470 | @Pirat_Nation: one post with 24k likes and 1.47M views |
| 10-11 | single-day +7,184 (peak) | @aakashgupta quoted Chamath saying "this week software and IP basically became worthless": 279k views |
| 10-14 | 56,729 | ZDNet (written for Linux users), Lifehacker, PCMag, Futurism, and a wave of YouTube reviews followed |
| 10-17 | 64,589 | Daily gains started to fall |
| 11-06 | 77,165 | Last 7 days +2,405, first 7 days +3,602, today +296 |

(Star counts come from GitHub's daily snapshots; X view counts are the numbers shown on the post pages.)

The curve shows two things. First, the author's own posts only lit the fuse. ArtCraft ran several Show HN posts earlier this year, each getting only 2 to 6 points. The same team, with the framing "clones Adobe," reached mainstream tech media. Second, the four days from 10-08 to 10-11 were driven by big X accounts, and they reposted because the story fits in one sentence: "someone rebuilt all of Adobe with AI for free." Many of those reposts came from AI news and aggregator accounts. I found no evidence that any were paid promotion.

### Why this one

**One story hit three audiences at once.** Designers resent Adobe subscriptions, and saw "free, no subscription, no account, offline." The AI crowd was arguing over whether AI can write large software. On HN, some said "I tried it, AI-written code has many problems and is misleading," while others said "this project more or less answers whether AI can produce large, usable software." The investor crowd used it to argue "software is dead," and Chamath and Aakash Gupta brought it into VC and stock market talk. The reposts from all three groups stacked up to 1.47M views.

**It looked real.** The first screen of the README says "If you know Photoshop, you already know PhotoCraft." Shortcuts from ⌘J to ⇧⌘D are in their original places. Rendering is GPU-based, not an Electron wrapper. Saved PSD files reopen correctly: 307 of 309 test files render identically. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, and the web. Linux users have never had Photoshop, and the ZDNet piece was written for them. Established open-source photo editors like GIMP and Krita were often criticized for needing a relearn. PhotoCraft avoids that.

**Fast iteration, all visible.** More than 9,400 commits in a little over a month, and several releases a week. HN comments went from "totally unusable" to "I tried today's version and it mostly works."

**Letting other people's AI help.** The repo has an AGENTS.md that lays out house rules, and the maintainers merge community PRs in batches ("Integration batch 18: 23 epic PRs"). 11-06 has 1,119 open PRs, and forks are 17.7% of stars, while new repos of similar size typically sit around 11% (inference: the extra forks are mostly people using Claude or Codex to submit PRs). Those contributors also repost the project.

**Controversy is also heat.** The HN post was later flagged, r/Adobe removed its post, and PetaPixel wrote a section on Adobe holding thousands of patents and the legal risk of copying interfaces. The disputes themselves became news.

### Open source is just the entry point

All Craft apps are distributed through the ArtCraft Launcher, and the top bar of the official site has a Pricing link. Cloning is free. What's paid is the AI generation inside: $10, $35, and $60 a month, corresponding to 1,000 to 6,600 credits. It can call Nano Banana, GPT-Image, Seedance, and Kling, and the page advertises "8% off for a limited time." Some users complained on blogs and LinkedIn that "it pushes me toward AI the moment I open it." The HN comment asking "why do I have to sign up first" was pointing at the same funnel.

This money matters little to you. Open-source folks chase stars and reputation, and Thomas can turn stars into cash because he already has a paid product behind them. The point worth remembering is another one: the org's 33 repos together hold roughly 260k stars, the org account has 67k followers, and the flagship repo artcraft went from 10k stars to 39k around 10-09. One hit can pull every project under the same account up with it.

### Who else is in this lane

| Project | Scale (GitHub stars) | How PhotoCraft differs |
|---|---|---|
| storytold's other Crafts (pdfcraft, filmcraft, wordcraft, lightcraft, vectorcraft, and more) | 11k to 20k | Same template, but the less famous the target software, the fewer stars |
| storytold/craft-anything | About 15k | Built by 10-31, teaches AI to clone any software, sells the method rather than the product |
| HeyPuter/everything | About 7,300, +7 in the last 2,076 days | Built by 10-13, "rebuild every software in the world from scratch," 51 small web apps, broad but shallow |
| GraphiteEditor/Graphite | 27.8k, +69 in the last 7 days | Also written in Rust, but started in 2020, takes a node-based approach, and doesn't imitate Photoshop |
| rawmakase, redlamp, rembrandt, and other Lightroom alternatives | 200 to 1,600 | AI-written single products from the same period, mostly didn't take off |
| layershop, photocraft-companion | Small | Forks built on PhotoCraft (ComfyUI integration, local AI plugins) |
| GIMP, Krita, Photopea, Affinity | Long-established | Either the interface differs from Photoshop, or they're closed source |

The line "AI clean-room rewrite of some big company's software" was already used up by storytold and Puter in October, and both already had a name for it. storytold keeps copying its own template, and each new clone gets fewer stars than the last.

### If it were you

**Bottom line:** Building another "AI rewrites Photoshop" is pointless now. What you can learn is the playbook: find a famous, resented paid software product whose open-source alternatives are hard to use, build a one-to-one version that works on first click, and back it with a story that fits in one sentence. This can earn stars, but the heat is fading and many are following, so it's not a good bet.

**Who it suits:** Developers who know one specific paid software well and can use AI coding tools to make a version that insiders wouldn't laugh at, within a few weeks. Ideally they already have some reputation, or a convincing track record like Thomas, since half the story's credibility comes from the author.

**Who it doesn't suit:** Anyone wanting to challenge Adobe or Microsoft head-on (that layer is taken). Anyone who won't push their material on X, Reddit, or Chinese recommendation accounts and would rather just write code. Anyone unsure about the legal risk of copying interfaces and trademarks.

**How to do it:**

- Product choice: pick a paid tool nobody has cloned yet, but one users already resent when it comes up. It could be a professional tool for a niche industry (typesetting, CAD plugins, audio, subtitles), or software whose subscription pricing frustrates users in China (inference: Chinese recommendation accounts are more willing to share this kind of story).

- Make it usable right away: match the original's interface and shortcuts, read and write the original file formats (PhotoCraft's PSD round-trip is where its credibility comes from), put screenshots and a download or web trial on the homepage, and don't require sign-up first.

- Write an AGENTS.md, publicly invite others to submit PRs made with AI, and merge them in batches. That saves you effort and gives you more people who will repost for you.

**How to get users:** First test the water with one post on a relevant Reddit subreddit and on HN, and see whether the comments get heated enough. Prepare a post that can be screenshotted and reposted directly: a side-by-side comparison with the original and one line like "someone rebuilt XX with AI for free." Actively pitch it to AI news and aggregator accounts on X. Media and blogs in the target software's industry (for PhotoCraft, PetaPixel) will cover you sooner than general tech media.

**When to move:** PhotoCraft's daily gains have already fallen from 7,184 to around 300. The "AI clones paid software" topic will probably last until year-end (inference). If you do it, launch the first version before mid-December.

**Signs you've misjudged:** ① PhotoCraft's and Everything's weekly gains both drop to a few hundred, and new clone repos can't get past a thousand stars after launch: the topic has faded, and this route returns to the slow pace of established open source. ② Adobe or another major company sends legal letters or DMCA takedowns to these repos: the risk of copying interfaces has become real. ③ The opposite: if a new "AI clones XX" gets mainstream coverage and a post with a million views, the market isn't tired yet, and the window is longer than expected.

---

Data and sources: GitHub repo pages, README, commits and releases (11-06); daily star counts from daily snapshots; the Hacker News "ArtCraft Apps" post (10-04) and follow-up discussion; coverage by PetaPixel (10-07), Ars Technica, ZDNet, Lifehacker, PCMag, and Futurism; posts by @DataChaz, @Pirat_Nation, and @aakashgupta on X; the getartcraft.com pricing page. The number of downloads that became long-term users, and how many paid subscriptions, have not been disclosed. Whether the X reposts from large accounts were paid promotion has not been verified.

[GitHub repo ↗](https://github.com/storytold/photocraft)

**Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report**

Competitors

| Name | Where | Launched | Scale | How it differs from this one |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GIMP | Open source | 1996 | Established, GitLab main repo, GitHub mirror 6.6k stars | The interface and concepts differ from Photoshop, so users must relearn. PhotoCraft copies Photoshop's interface and shortcuts and reads and writes PSD. |
| Krita | Open source | 2005 | GitHub mirror 10.7k stars | Focused on digital painting; PhotoCraft targets photo editing and layout |
| Graphite | Open source | 2020 | 27.8k stars, +7 in the last 69 days | Rust too, but a node-based take on a new paradigm instead of copying Photoshop. PhotoCraft clones Photoshop outright, and an AI wrote it in a few days |
| Photopea | Web | 2013 | tens of millions of monthly active users (publicly reported, unverified) | Closed source, web-based, with ads. PhotoCraft is open source, native, offline, and has an MCP control channel |
| Affinity Photo(Canva) | Other | 2015,2025 went free | Commercial products | Closed source, no Linux version. PhotoCraft is open source and runs on Linux / FreeBSD / Web |
| Adobe Photoshop / Firefly | Big-company features | 1990 | Industry standard | Monthly subscription, needs internet and an account. PhotoCraft is free and offline, but still in early alpha |

Where users come from

- **Verified** **Founder posted it on Reddit / HN himself** : posted on r/SaaS, r/Bard, r/ClaudeAI (r/Adobe removed the post); HN 10-04 180 points, 246 comments

- **Verified** **Tech media coverage** : PetaPixel and Ars Technica ran it 10-07; ZDNet, Lifehacker, PCMag and Futurism followed

- **Verified** **Big X accounts and AI news accounts flooded the feed** : @Pirat_Nation 1.47M views, @DataChaz 355k, @aakashgupta 279k (quoting Chamath), all clustered between 10-08 and 10-11, in sync with the star peak

- **Verified** **YouTube reviews** : several review videos, including "They are cloning Photoshop." and "Is This the End of Software?"

- **Verified** **One publisher, many repos, new clones released in batches** : 09-30 created 5 repos at once, 10-07 then added Word / Excel / PPT / AutoCAD, and 10-31 released craft-anything. The stars cross-promote within the same org

- **Verified** **Funnels traffic to the paid ArtCraft AI subscription** : every clone is distributed through the ArtCraft Launcher, and the official site sells an AI generation subscription at $10–60/month with a limited-time 8% off

## storytold/photocraft (PhotoCraft): why it got 77k stars in 37 days

> Channel: GitHub. Data as of 2026-11-06. Star counts and growth come from our github database (repo_profile / repo_day) and live GitHub API queries; sentiment comes from Jina search, the hackernews database, and live X search (TikHub).

### One line

PhotoCraft is a **clean-room rewrite of Photoshop in pure Rust** built with Claude Opus 5.5 by ArtCraft (org name storytold, founder Brandon Thomas, former CEO of Storyteller.ai / FakeYou and former Square engineer). It took off not because of its photo-editing features, but because of the story **"one person cloned all of Adobe in a week with AI"** . Starting 2026-10-07, PetaPixel and Ars Technica ran it as news; from 10-08 to 10-11 big X accounts flooded the feed (@Pirat_Nation's post got 1.47M views and 24k likes), and Chamath added fuel in the All-In circle by saying "software IP is now worthless." Of the seven "XXCraft" projects, it's the easiest to understand (everyone knows Photoshop), so it captured the biggest share of that traffic.

### Data

- Repo created 2026-09-30. As of 11-06 it has 77,165 stars, 13,676 forks, 2,322 open issues, 1,119 open PRs, and 9,400+ commits (GitHub API).

- Curve (github repo_day): 10-01 started with only 8 stars → 10-09 26,470 → peak single-day gain of +10-11 7,184 → 10-14 56,729 → 10-17 64,589 → since then daily gains have fallen steadily from 1,800 to about 300. Last 7 days: +2,405; first 7 days: +3,602. It's cooling off.

- It never made trending (the repo was under 60 days old, and trending doesn't count repos that young, so that proves nothing). The suspect list in our database is empty. Fork-to-star ratio is 17.7%, above the median of ~11% for new repos of similar size. That doesn't look like star-buying. The forks are mostly because it openly accepts agent-written PRs (see below).

- Downloads: cumulative release-asset downloads for PhotoCraft are about 4.18M, and ArtCraft Launcher about 5.7M (summed from the GitHub API download_count field, including auto-update pulls, so it's not a count of people). The third-party site photocraft.im lists "Installer downloads 3.6M".

- Sister repos were lifted along with it: pdfcraft 19.8k, filmcraft 17.7k, wordcraft 17.4k, lightcraft 15.6k, vectorcraft 11.4k… org total is about 260k stars, and the org account has 67.7k followers. The parent product storytold/artcraft (the AI creation engine, repo created 2022) went from 10-09 10,146 to 39k.

### Why it took off

#### 1. Timeline: a test run on HN first, then the news and big X accounts set it off

| Date | Event | Sources |
|---|---|---|
| 09-30 | photocraft / pdfcraft / filmcraft / lightcraft / vectorcraft created within the same hour | GitHub API |
| 10-04 | HN: "ArtCraft Apps – open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust", 180 points, 246 comments, later flagged | hackernews database id 49958850 |
| Early October | The author posted "I've created Open Source 100% Rust clean-room replacements for 7 of Adobe's apps" on r/SaaS, r/Bard, and r/ClaudeAI; the r/Adobe post was removed | Jina search; links within the PetaPixel article |
| 10-07 | PetaPixel and Ars Technica ("Software is over") covered it; PhotoCraft was also posted to HN on its own (18 points) | petapixel.com 2026-10-07;arstechnica.com 2026-10 |
| 10-08 | @DataChaz: "HOLY F*CK, THIS GUY LITERALLY REIMPLEMENTED ALL ADOBE PRODUCTS", 8.8k likes / 355k views; @AiwithYasir 179k views; Thai gaming account @sheapgamer 95k views | Live X search (TikHub) |
| 10-09 | @Pirat_Nation: 24k likes, 2,281 reposts, 1.47M views | Same as above |
| 10-11 | @aakashgupta quoted Chamath, "IP and software were effectively rendered worthless this week", 279k views; that same day PhotoCraft gained +7,184 stars in a single day (the peak) | Same as above; github repo data |
| After 10-08 | ZDNet, Lifehacker, PCMag, Futurism, tedium.co, daily.dev, and many YouTube reviews ("They are cloning Photoshop." and others) followed | Jina search |
| 10-25 | HN: "What Adobe v ArtCraft teaches us", 91 points | hackernews database |

#### 2. It hit three nerves

- **Hatred of Adobe subscriptions** : the author said on Reddit that Adobe "charged me to cancel several times, and I've hated them ever since" (quoted by PetaPixel). "Free, no subscription, offline, no account" is a rallying cry in itself, and communities like r/FuckAdobe spread it on their own.

- **The "can AI build large software?" debate** : on HN, some said "Tested it: very broken software produced by AI… deceptive" while others said "this project kind of settles whether one can build large, working software with AI." That argument made it a topic for the AI crowd, not just designers.

- **The "software is dead / SaaS valuation" narrative** : investor and product accounts like Chamath and Aakash Gupta used it to argue that "software IP is worth nothing now," carrying it into US stock and VC circles.

- Also, Linux users have never had Photoshop, and the ZDNet piece was written specifically for them.

#### 3. Why it stuck: the iteration speed is visible

- 9,400+ commits, v0.17 → v0.20.2, several releases a week. The README is specific (after PSD re-save, 307 of 309 psd-tools test files render identically, 16 adjustment layer types, an MCP control channel). Later HN comments went from "completely unusable" to "tried today's version, mostly fine."

- **Treating agents as contributors** : the repo has an AGENTS.md "house rules" file, and maintainers bundled community PRs into "Integration batch 18: 23 epic PRs" and merged them. The top contributor is davidmann4 (1,710 commits). 1,119 open PRs suggest many people are submitting PRs with their own Claude/Codex, which is mainly why forks are high, and it makes the participants into promoters.

### Differentiation

Compared with other products doing the same thing:

- **GIMP / Krita / Pinta** : long-standing open-source editors, but their menus, shortcuts, and concepts differ from Photoshop, so users have to relearn. PhotoCraft's pitch is "If you know Photoshop, you already know PhotoCraft." ⌘J through ⇧⌘D are all in the same place, and it can actually read and write PSD.

- **Graphite (GraphiteEditor/Graphite)** : also an open-source image editor in Rust, started 2020, 27.8k stars, and gained only 69 over the last 7 days (github data). Graphite pursues a node-based paradigm that doesn't imitate Photoshop. PhotoCraft copies the interface directly, and one person with AI built it in a few days.

- **Photopea** (web-based, free with ads, looks like Photoshop), **Affinity** (changed to free by Canva in 2025), **Photoshop web / Firefly** : they are either closed source or cloud-based. PhotoCraft is open source, native, and offline, and it has an MCP / JSON control channel that makes it easy for agents to drive.

- The real differentiation isn't any single editing feature. It's two things: **a near one-to-one Photoshop interface (plus PSD round-tripping)** and **the story of an AI clean-room rewrite of all of Adobe** . The first makes "replace Photoshop for free" feel real; the second makes media and big X accounts want to share it. So yes, differentiation is why it ran, but to be precise, the stars come from the story, not from product maturity (the README itself labels it early alpha).

### Growth channels

1. **The founder posted it himself** (on several Reddit subs, and on HN multiple times. ArtCraft's Show HN earlier this year only got 2–6 points; with the "clone Adobe" angle it reached 180 points). Confirmed.

2. **Releasing a whole suite at once** : 09-30 created 5 repos at the same time, 10-07 then added Word / Excel / PowerPoint / AutoCAD / Pro Tools clones, and 10-31 added craft-anything ("understand how any software works, and craft your own"). Each new addition generated another news hook. Confirmed (from GitHub repo creation dates).

3. **Organic spread by media and big X accounts** : no sign of paid promotion; it's all AI news accounts and reposting accounts using the viral template "SOMEONE REBUILT ALL OF ADOBE 100% FREE". The pattern is confirmed, but whether any of it was paid promotion is unverified.

4. **The funnel leads back to paid products** : every XXCraft is distributed through ArtCraft Launcher, and the site's top bar has Pricing and "Launch App". ArtCraft AI Studio is a monthly subscription at $10 / $35 / $60 (1,000–6,600 credits, running Nano Banana, GPT-Image, Seedance, Kling), and the page also shows a "8% off, limited time" banner. The free clones are the acquisition channel; the money comes from AI generation subscriptions. People on glyndewis.com and LinkedIn complain that "it keeps pushing me toward AI the moment I open it", which shows the funneling is deliberate. Pricing is confirmed; conversion rate is unknown.

5. **Built-in open-source community and Discord** : the README's first screen is a Discord button, plus "ArtCraft is a community of artists".

### How many people saw it, and the copycats

- **Widely discussed** : PetaPixel, Ars Technica, ZDNet, Lifehacker, PCMag and Futurism all covered it, a post on X hit a million views, and it became a topic in the All-In circle. It falls in the "revenue public or widely discussed" tier. The revenue itself is not public (not found on TrustMRR).

- **Copycats** :
    - HeyPuter/everything (Puter team, 10-13 repos built, "We're rebuilding and open-sourcing the world's software from scratch", 7,258 stars, +2,076 in the last 7 days);
    - third-party SEO sites photocraft.im ("Unofficial community guide") and craftsuite.net (unofficial download page, posted on Show HN);
    - derivative work: slavomirdurej/layershop ("a combination of ComfyUI and PhotoCraft") and kobaltgit/photocraft-companion (local DirectML AI plugin);
    - a wave of "AI clones of X software" projects in the same period, such as rawmakase, redlamp and rembrandt, Lightroom alternatives (GitHub repos, each at 200–1,600 stars).
    - ArtCraft itself keeps reusing the template (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, AutoCAD, Pro Tools and Figma clones, from 4k to 17k stars, with fewer the further along it goes).

### What to take from it

- **Borrow a big company's name as positioning** : "open-source clean-room alternative to XX" explains the product in one line, and the more famous and resented the target (subscriptions, cancellation fees), the faster it spreads.

- **The story travels faster than the product** : the same team's Show HN in early 2026 scored only 2–6 points; after reframing it as "one person + AI clones Adobe in a week", it hit mainstream media. The story has to hit three groups at once: users (saving money), the AI crowd (proof of capability), and the investor crowd ("software is dead").

- **Ship in a bundle, release in batches** : split one story into a dozen repos, each one able to get coverage on its own, with stars cross-linking within the same organization.

- **Open source for attention, another product for revenue** : the free clone brings people into the Launcher, and the paid product is the AI generation subscription.

- **Invite agents to open PRs** : write AGENTS.md, merge PRs in batches, and let the community use their own AI quota to do the work for you; contributors also repost it.

### Still unclear

- It's unknown how many downloads became long-term users, or how many people paid for an ArtCraft subscription.

- No evidence was found that the spread on the big X accounts was paid promotion.

- Legal risk: PetaPixel points out that Adobe holds a large number of patents, and that the look and trademarks (a near one-to-one interface) could be a problem. No public response from Adobe or a cease-and-desist letter has been found.

- Star growth has dropped from a peak of 7,184/day to about 300/day. Whether it can keep people through feature maturity or needs the next clone story is not yet clear.

- A BetterOffline subreddit post counted forks and contributors, but the original was blocked by Reddit and the full text could not be read.

### Sources

- [github.com/storytold/photocraft](https://github.com/storytold/photocraft) (README, commits, releases, contributors; GitHub API 2026-11-06)

- Our GitHub repos: storytold/photocraft, storytold/artcraft, GraphiteEditor/Graphite, HeyPuter/everything

- Hacker News dataset: 49958850, 49986072, 50004284, 50010170, 50232682, 50039007, 50289578, 50177345

- [petapixel.com/2026/10/07/someone-rebuilt-free-open-source-ve…](https://petapixel.com/2026/10/07/someone-rebuilt-free-open-source-versions-of-photoshop-premiere-and-lightroom-using-ai/)

- [arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-develope…](https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/10/software-is-over-bold-ai-developer-takes-aim-at-adobe-with-open-source-clones/)

- [www.zdnet.com/tech/free-photoshop-clone-alternative-linux-ph…](https://www.zdnet.com/tech/free-photoshop-clone-alternative-linux-photocraft/)

- [lifehacker.com/tech/i-tried-photocraft-the-ai-clone-of-photo…](https://lifehacker.com/tech/i-tried-photocraft-the-ai-clone-of-photoshop)

- [futurism.com/future-society/adobe-creative-suite-software-op…](https://futurism.com/future-society/adobe-creative-suite-software-open-source-artcraft)

- [news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850)

- X: [x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/2108437553615425881](https://x.com/Pirat_Nation/status/2108437553615425881), [x.com/DataChaz/status/2107951351301099963](https://x.com/DataChaz/status/2107951351301099963), [x.com/aakashgupta/status/2109198317624463646](https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2109198317624463646), [x.com/firesidealpha/status/2108761607857992104](https://x.com/firesidealpha/status/2108761607857992104)

- [getartcraft.com/pricing](https://getartcraft.com/pricing), [getartcraft.com/apps/photocraft](https://getartcraft.com/apps/photocraft), [photocraft.im/](https://photocraft.im/)

- [glyndewis.com/blog/artcraft-cloned-adobe](https://glyndewis.com/blog/artcraft-cloned-adobe)

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.