AI used to build free clones of Photoshop, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
Key Points
- ArtCraft released free alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint
- The apps open and save real .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files
- Developers built them in Rust with help from Anthropic’s Claude
- The apps are alpha and roughly 50% to 60% ready for real work
- The team released seven Adobe-style alternatives earlier in October
ArtCraft has released free, open-source alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint built using AI. The developers behind the project said WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft can open and save real .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files.
The team wrote the apps in the Rust programming language with help from Anthropic’s Claude AI model, using a clean-room approach. This means the developers built the software from scratch without using any of Microsoft’s code.
All three apps run natively on Windows, macOS, Linux and BSD, and the developers also offer versions that run in a web browser.
The apps use a ribbon-style interface similar to the one Microsoft Office users already know. They also expose their commands to the command line and to AI agents through the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
Anyone can use, modify and redistribute the software under either the MIT or Apache 2.0 licence. The project operates independently of Microsoft and has no affiliation with the company.
The developers still label the apps as alpha software and estimate they are roughly 50% to 60% ready for real work. They claimed high feature coverage in areas such as ribbon tools and spreadsheet functions, but the apps remain early and experimental.
Adobe alternatives are also here
The office apps follow a larger suite of Adobe Creative Cloud alternatives that the same team released earlier in October 2026. The developers built these apps in Rust with Claude’s help, using the same clean-room approach and licensing:
- PhotoCraft – A Photoshop-style image editor
- VectorCraft – Am Illustrator-style vector design tool
- FilmCraft- A Premiere Pro-style video editor
- LightCraft – A Lightroom-style photo manager
- EffectCraft – An After Effects-style motion graphics tool
- DesignCraft – An InDesign-style layout tool
- PdfCraft – An Acrobat-style PDF editor
PhotoCraft collected a large number of stars on GitHub shortly after its launch. The team also has CADCraft and SoundCraft at various stages of development.
The ArtCraft apps are not the only free, AI-focused office suite available. Genspark maintains GenOffice, a free Apache 2.0 suite with document, spreadsheet and presentation editors that also work natively with .docx, .xlsx and .pptx files. GenOffice includes built-in AI agent and command-line features for working with these files.
All of the ArtCraft apps are available through the project’s GitHub page and the ArtCraft website.
