Seven Open-Source Clones of Adobe's Apps, Credited to Claude Opus 5.5
Seven open-source apps recreating the user interface and tools of Adobe's Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign and Acrobat Pro were announced on Reddit this week. Software developer Brandon Thomas, who posted them, said he used Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to produce what he called "clean-room replacements" for Adobe's closed-source software.
The ambition is the loudest part of the pitch. An interface can be copied in a weekend; the harder claim is that people who earn a living inside these programs would trust their files to a version written by a model. That is the test the alpha has not yet faced.
AI-generated discussion · Different perspectives
The build is described as a "super early alpha," and commenters have already catalogued its shortcomings. The promise attached to it is that it will soon be as functional as anything Adobe has shipped.
The phrase "clean-room" sits oddly beside a project built on AI-powered reverse engineering that mimics another program's look, feel and functionality. One word is about how the code was made; the other is about what it imitates.