Commenters are divided on whether Anthropic's IPO represents a necessary step for scaling infrastructure or an opportunistic cash-out driven by inflated valuations and looming commoditization. While some argue that switching between LLM providers is technically trivial due to standardized APIs, others contend that enterprise moats are sustained by deep integration, governance stability, and corporate contracts.
887 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4 · Supporting reply 5 · Supporting reply 6 · Supporting reply 7 · Supporting reply 8 · Supporting reply 9 · Supporting reply 10 · Supporting reply 11 · Supporting reply 12 · Supporting reply 13 · Supporting reply 14 · Supporting reply 15 · Supporting reply 16storytold
photocraft
Rust2026–2026
storytold / photocraft
photocraft
PhotoCraft: An open-source photo editor written from scratch in pure Rust
20Distinct people
24Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
78.9KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
PhotoCraft: An open-source photo editor written from scratch in pure Rust
GitHub
Where it is used
The last source check was inconclusive. This does not establish whether a product uses it.
What people are saying
No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.
Debated Commenters criticize PhotoCraft for misleading hype regarding its feature parity with Adobe Photoshop and report issues with UI performance. However, other users argue that reported slowness stems from the image processing engine rather than the GUI framework, noting that many issues have been resolved.
This week’s discussion disagrees. Read the supporting reply
Also in these discussions
- storytold/filmcraft · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- storytold/pdfcraft · linked in 4 of the same discussions
- storytold/vectorcraft · linked in 4 of the same discussions
Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.
This week on Hacker News
Debated
Commenters criticize PhotoCraft for misleading hype regarding its feature parity with Adobe Photoshop and report issues with UI performance. However, other users argue that reported slowness stems from the image processing engine rather than the GUI framework, noting that many issues have been resolved.
Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · 3 discussions summarized
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 5:04:57 PM UTC.
The discussion centers on whether immediate-mode GUI frameworks like GPUI and egui are fundamentally unsuited for complex desktop applications due to performance scaling issues, with critics arguing that full redraws are inefficient while proponents claim state management complexity is the true bottleneck. A secondary debate questions the credibility of a critique article used as a vehicle for promoting a new framework, zgui, amidst widespread criticism of the original text's AI-generated quality.
101 readable replies · Supporting reply 1 · Supporting reply 2 · Supporting reply 3 · Supporting reply 4Mentions over time
HN mentions by day24 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2026-10-01 15:22:45 UTC to 2026-10-26 14:44:38 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1 | 2026-10-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-02 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Oct 2 | 2026-10-02 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-03 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Oct 3 | 2026-10-03 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-04 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Oct 4 | 2026-10-04 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-05 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 5 | 2026-10-05 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-06 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 1 | 2 |
| Oct 6 | 2026-10-06 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-07 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 1 | 3 |
| Oct 7 | 2026-10-07 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-08 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| Oct 8 | 2026-10-08 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Oct 9 | 2026-10-09 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-10 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Oct 10 | 2026-10-10 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-11 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| Oct 11 | 2026-10-11 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-12 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Oct 12 | 2026-10-12 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-13 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| Oct 13 | 2026-10-13 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-14 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| Oct 14 | 2026-10-14 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-15 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 15 | 2026-10-15 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-16 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 16 | 2026-10-16 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-17 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 17 | 2026-10-17 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-18 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 18 | 2026-10-18 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-19 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 19 | 2026-10-19 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-20 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 20 | 2026-10-20 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-21 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 21 | 2026-10-21 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-22 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 22 | 2026-10-22 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-23 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 23 | 2026-10-23 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-24 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 24 | 2026-10-24 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-25 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 25 | 2026-10-25 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-26 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Oct 26 | 2026-10-26 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-10-27 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
What Hacker News says
24 sourcesSUsuddenlybananas·Oct 26, 2026
https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/issues?q=is%3Aissue+... It's also a buggy mess
In Anthropic S-1Ask HN: How long before someone reverse-engineers Windows?
It just occurred to me that similar to Photoshop suite, someone is already working on getting Windows 10/11 reverse-engineered in a clean-room fashion.
I don't want to get into the discussion over the whole Craft suite, it's already been the talk of past week, after all, but judging by the pure popularity and the number of merge requests created within those couple days for just their Photoshop equivalent app, I am guessing these projects are not* going away anytime soon and they will, in fact, polish-out majority of issues:
https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/pulls
Also, while the original authors claim it was done without the debugger, I am absolutely certain thousands have their LLMs actively analyzing Adobe Suite now to get understand the knicks and crannies of it.
So if people hating on Adobe flocked to contribute to this project
Read the rest
so enthusiastically, I guess we can only imagine the sheer amount of interest worldwide an open-source Windows would bring, and not only from the volunteers this time around..
Take a look at the commit cadence of the Photoshop-clone-that-must-not-be-named: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/commits/main/
In Attack of the Vibe Coded Photoshop ClonesHas anyone compiled a list of best practices for using AI agents to develop large software projects in Rust?
Types help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49806799
Agent memory helps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49948328
Storytold's projects include some: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/blob/main/AGENTS.md
More?
In An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word in pure RustWorth keeping an eye on ArtCraft (https://getartcraft.com/apps).
They're building a free, open-source Adobe Creative Suite alternative entirely in Rust. It runs super fast with minimal overhead, works completely offline, and aims for near 1:1 feature parity with Adobe products like Photoshop, Lightroom, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and After Effects. It also supports command-based actions, making it easy to integrate into AI agents and automated workflows. They have Microsoft Office alternatives too.
Their Photoshop clone, PhotoCraft (https://github.com/storytold/photocraft), has around 47k GitHub stars right now.
In NYC's "Click to Cancel" rule is now in effectRecently, whole Adobe suite was recreated with AI[1]. Is there such an initiative in CAD world?
[1]https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
In OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD ModellerNo, we explicitly do not use reverse engineering. We do not decompile binaries, we do everything 100% clean room:
https://github.com/storytold/photocraft (inspired by Photoshop)
https://github.com/storytold/wordcraft (inspired by Word)
https://github.com/storytold/pdfcraft (one of the more mature apps)
https://github.com/storytold/vectorcraft (another app close to 1:1 parity)
(etc.)
Using REA for something as high profile as what we're doing is likely to result in lawsuits. We're doing everything we can by the books.
We cannot look at Adobe sources. Use of Ghidra is disallowed.
REA is probably great for personal apps and for abandonware, but I think if you publish the results and it's found to have decompiled the original proprietary sources in discovery, you might be in for a bad time.
In REA Reverse – Engineer AnythingBecause code still would be read by humans. Check the code for PhotoCraft[0] (clean room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop) which is being actively written in Rust by AI agents almost 24x7.
Check the overall layered architecture. That's nowhere AI. That's pure human ingenuity coupled with machine's raw horsepower to build on top.
And such people do need to read the code.
[0]. https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
In Python 3.15Talking about the devil, a few days ago this happened: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
In Tell HN: GitHub refuses to remove cracked copies of my software after a monthArtcraft seems to be part of their suite. The Photoshop clone is this one https://github.com/storytold/photocraft for example.
In Open-Source Rust Alternatives to Adobe AppsThey are clean-room implementations based on their GitHub:
https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
In Someone has decompiled the Adobe suite, rebuilt in Rust and released it as OSSPhotocraft: An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust
Repo: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
In Photocraft: An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe PhotoshopI'm just going to leave this right here: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft
"An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust".
They also have:
VectorCraft Vector illustration;
FilmCraft Video editing, color and sound;
LightCraft Photo library and raw development;
PrintCraft Reading, organizing and protecting PDF;
EffectCraft Motion graphics and visual effects;
DesignCraft Page layout and publishing
In Vibecoding Photoshop: Time and pressureShowing the 15 most recent of 24 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.