Open-Source Photoshop Clone: Did AI Really Build It in 9 Days?
Every figure shown on screen in this episode, with the document, page and date it comes from, and a label for how strong the evidence is.
PhotoCraft, an open-source Photoshop clone, collected about 29,000 GitHub stars in nine days, with Claude co-authoring most of its commits. We read the repository, its roadmap and its scorecard: what exists, how it was built, and how close it really is.
- Published
- 13 October 2026
- Length
- 7:51
- Figures checked
- 9 October 2026
- Documents
- 14
On screen in this episode
13The document shows it, and you can check it yourself.
17Someone says so, but nothing independent backs it up.
2Something that matters is missing from every source we checked.
4Our own arithmetic, with the inputs and method shown below.
What isn’t shown
- 1:59Where the 42,241 lines came from: the history shows when code arrived, not when it was written
- 6:17Who wrote which lines; what the models had seen; how the apps run on a viewer's machine; any public Adobe statement (none found by 9 Oct 2026)
- 2:54Nothing in the repo shows what the models had seen.
- 3:16By the ninth of October we found no public statement from Adobe.
On screen, in order
- 0:05
28,900 GitHub stars (PhotoCraft, 9 Oct 2026, 06:18 UTC)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [1] storytold repositories
- 0:08
Seven repositories that describe themselves as clean-room reimplementations of Adobe apps (created 30 Sep–1 Oct)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [1] storytold repositories
- 0:13
Commit f4d489e, trailer "Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5"
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history, commit f4d489e
- 0:26
"real Photoshop parity is still well below 50%" (the project's own roadmap)
Data as of 8 October 2026.
- [3] PhotoCraft roadmap, Honest parity assessment, Bottom line
- 0:30
PhotoCraft, LightCraft, FilmCraft, VectorCraft, PdfCraft, EffectCraft, DesignCraft: repositories published 30 Sep and 1 Oct 2026
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [1] storytold repositories
- 0:52
Five more repositories created 7 Oct: wordcraft, gridcraft, deckcraft, cadcraft, soundcraft
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [1] storytold repositories
- 1:00
Stars per repository, 9 Oct 2026 06:18 UTC: photocraft 28,900 · lightcraft 6,167 · filmcraft 5,712 · pdfcraft 4,942 · vectorcraft 4,144 · effectcraft 3,014 · designcraft 1,763 · wordcraft 955 · cadcraft 905 · gridcraft 663 · soundcraft 625 · deckcraft 551
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [1] storytold repositories
- 1:08
"status: early alpha" badge
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [4] PhotoCraft README, top badges
- 1:12
v0.1.0 on 2 Oct (00:09 UTC); v0.5.0 on 8 Oct (14:52 UTC)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [5] PhotoCraft releases
- 1:29
Commits per day (UTC): 30 Sep 6 · 1 Oct 10 · 2 Oct 18 · 3 Oct 35 · 4 Oct 57 · 5 Oct 108 · 6 Oct 36 · 7 Oct 200 · 8 Oct 217 · 9 Oct 104 (to 05:26)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history
- 1:33
791 commits ÷ 8.97 days ≈ 88 commits a day (30 Sep 06:12 → 9 Oct 05:26 UTC)
- 1:40
Commit 16941f7 "one-shot": +42,241 lines, 241 files, author timestamp 30 Sep 09:02 UTC
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history, commit 16941f7
- 1:51
Commit ae92ac2 "continued wip": +37,990 lines, 181 files, 30 Sep 13:37 UTC; neither commit carries an AI co-author line
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history, commit ae92ac2
- 1:59
Where the 42,241 lines came from: the history shows when code arrived, not when it was written
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- Checked[2] PhotoCraft commit history
- 2:16
489 of 791 commits (61.8 %) have a "Co-authored-by: Claude …" line
- 2:21
Co-author lines by model: Claude Opus 5.5 407 · Opus 4.8 46 · Claude (no version) 15 · Fable 5.1 14 · Mythos 5.1 4 · Sonnet 5.5 2 · Haiku 4.5 1; GitHub Copilot 31
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history
- 2:33
302 of 791 commits (38.2 %) carry no AI co-author line
- 2:40
116 contributor accounts (GitHub contributors API; may include bots)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history
- 2:58
"Clean-room: implemented from public specs and observed behaviour only. No proprietary code, shaders or assets."
- 3:06
Adobe publishes the Photoshop File Formats Specification (November 2019): "provided for 3rd parties to read and write the Photoshop native file format"
- [7] Adobe PSD specification, Preface, Audience
- 3:11
"PhotoCraft's PSD support is a standalone crate written from Adobe's public specification"
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [4] PhotoCraft README, PSD without compromise
- 3:16
"We studied Photoshop and other proprietary editors for behaviour and look only."
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [8] PhotoCraft AGENTS.md, Golden rules, 3. Clean-room
- 3:22
"Never read Adobe binaries or GPL raw/photo code …"
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [9] LightCraft README, Clean-room
- 3:32
"About two in five" settings do nothing: 56 of 140 (06:18 UTC) → 55 of 140 (≈ 07:00 UTC); 56 ÷ 140 = 40 %
- 3:43
"If you know Photoshop, you already know PhotoCraft."; trademark notice: not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Adobe Inc.
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [4] PhotoCraft README, Familiar by design; footer
- 4:10
627 of 627 menu items live (100.0 %)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [11] PhotoCraft parity.md
- 4:15
Overall functional parity (weighted, mainstream workflows): ~86 % (update 3 Oct); the roadmap's feature-surface estimate: ~82 %
- 4:23
"real Photoshop parity is still well below 50%"; "A professional could switch for daily work": roughly 25–35 %
Data as of 8 October 2026.
- [3] PhotoCraft roadmap, Honest parity assessment, Bottom line and Overall
- 4:50
Broken basics found on first public use: text selection offset, 214 shortcut failures, an immovable crop frame … "that all counted as live in parity.md"
Data as of 8 October 2026.
- [3] PhotoCraft roadmap, Bottom line
- 5:08
47 scenarios: 3 within budget, 22 over budget or failing (baseline 5 Oct 2026); 25 have a speed target
Data as of 5 October 2026.
- [10] PhotoCraft scorecard, Summary, Performance
- 5:15
P12, arrow-key nudge in a 150-layer document: "panicked: wgpu error"; roadmap: "crashes the GPU compositor"
- 5:25
Baseline run: load average 224.90 / 226.31 / 196.03 ("heavily loaded machine")
- 5:35
"Re-saving keeps the render of 307 of the 309 psd-tools test files."
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- [4] PhotoCraft README, Real PSD files
- 5:45
Early alpha, version 0.5.0; macOS, Windows, Linux (and Web) listed
- 6:12
"True 1:1 parity is many months of focused work"
Data as of 8 October 2026.
- [3] PhotoCraft roadmap, Overall
- 6:17
Who wrote which lines; what the models had seen; how the apps run on a viewer's machine; any public Adobe statement (none found by 9 Oct 2026)
Data as of 9 October 2026.
- Checked[2] PhotoCraft commit history
Also said in the narration
- 2:54
Nothing in the repo shows what the models had seen.
- 3:16
By the ninth of October we found no public statement from Adobe.
Checked 9 Oct 2026 by web search for a public Adobe statement about ArtCraft; none found. Adobe's own newsroom and blog were not reviewed. Recheck on publication day.
- Checked[7] Adobe PSD specification
- 3:43
It also says, in small print, that it isn't affiliated with Adobe, and uses the names only to describe the workflows it works with.
- [4] PhotoCraft README, License and trademarks
- 4:44
The menu number doesn't measure whether commands behave like Photoshop.
Roadmap: it "does not measure whether those commands behave like Photoshop, feel right, or survive real files."
- [3] PhotoCraft roadmap, Parity metrics
- 5:54
The roadmap says the missing part is depth: behaving like Photoshop on real files, at real speed, without crashing.
Our calculations
- Commits per day
791 commits on main (author timestamps 2026-09-30T06:12:04Z to 2026-10-09T05:26:44Z = 8.97 days); 791 ÷ 8.97 = 88.2. Source: GitHub commits API, retrieved 2026-10-09 06:18 UTC.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history
- Share of commits with a Claude co-author line
Count of commits whose message contains a "Co-authored-by: Claude …" trailer: 489 of 791 = 61.8 %. The trailer is a label added by the committer or tool; it does not measure who wrote which lines.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history
- Share of commits without an AI co-author label
791 − 489 = 302 commits (38.2 %) with no Claude trailer. A missing label does not show that AI was not used.
- [2] PhotoCraft commit history
- Settings that do nothing, as a share
Scorecard "settings that do nothing": 56 of 140 in the copy retrieved 2026-10-09 06:18 UTC (the linked revision shows 55 of 140). 56 ÷ 140 = 40 %, 55 ÷ 140 = 39 %; the episode rounds to "about two in five".
- [10] PhotoCraft scorecard
Documents
- Update 12 October 2026: the project rewrote its assessment on 10 October. Its live documents now rate PhotoCraft at about 45 % "ready for real work" (range 40–50 %), stage alpha, and the roadmap and parity pages named in the video have been restructured. The document links on this page point to the exact revisions current on 9 October, which are the ones the video quotes. The new assessment: github.com/storytold/photocraft/blob/main/docs/target-app-parity.md ("Headline (2026-10-10, PhotoCraft 0.6.0)"; retrieved 12 Oct 2026).
- All figures are a snapshot of 9 October 2026 (GitHub data retrieved 06:18 UTC); the project changes daily and figures are rechecked on publication day.
- Recheck at 19:07 UTC the same day: PhotoCraft 33,804 stars, 990 commits (63.1 % with a Claude co-author line), 141 contributor accounts, roadmap unchanged ("Updated 2026-10-08", "well below 50%"), scorecard 55 of 141 settings that do nothing, menu parity 627 of 627. The video states its figures with their dates and is not re-voiced.
- "Co-authored-by" lines are labels added by committers or tools. They are not a measurement of who wrote which lines.
- Everything in the "CLAIMED" rows is the project's own statement about itself. Owlfox did not download or run the software.
- Screenshots in the video are captures of the pages listed here, taken 9 Oct 2026 (06:29–08:22 UTC); README images are the project's own and licensed MIT OR Apache-2.0, with public-domain artwork.
- [1]
- [2]
GitHub (storytold/photocraft)
Commit history of the main branch
Data as of 9 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Counts via the GitHub commits API, retrieved 06:18 UTC; 791 commits, first author timestamp 2026-09-30 06:12 UTC, last 2026-10-09 05:26 UTC.
Used at 0:13 · 1:29 · 1:33 · 1:40 · 1:51 · 1:59 · 2:16 · 2:21 · 2:33 · 2:40 · 6:17
- [3]
- [4]
- [5]
- [6]
ArtCraft / PdfCraft contributors
Data as of 9 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
Used at 2:58
- [7]
Adobe
Adobe Photoshop File Formats Specification
Published November 2019 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
November 2019 edition. Opened in a normal browser; automated clients receive HTTP 403.
- [8]
ArtCraft / PhotoCraft contributors
PhotoCraft AGENTS.md (guide for AI agents and contributors)
Data as of 9 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
- [9]
ArtCraft / LightCraft contributors
Data as of 9 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
- [10]
ArtCraft / PhotoCraft contributors
PhotoCraft scorecard (docs/scorecard.md), generated by cargo xtask scorecard
Data as of 5 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Performance baseline 2026-10-05 (machine heavily loaded); summary counts regenerated by CI.
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
- [11]
ArtCraft / PhotoCraft contributors
PhotoCraft menu parity (docs/parity.md), generated by cargo xtask parity
Data as of 9 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
Used at 4:10
- [12]
ArtCraft / PhotoCraft contributors
PhotoCraft feature-parity estimate (docs/parity-estimate.md)
Data as of 3 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
- [13]
- [14]
ArtCraft / PhotoCraft contributors
PhotoCraft contributing guide (docs/contributing.md)
Data as of 9 October 2026 · Retrieved 9 October 2026
Licence: MIT OR Apache-2.0
Used at 2:54
Corrections
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Found an error? Email [email protected] with the time stamp and your source, or leave a comment under the video.