PhotoCraft
An image editor written from scratch in Rust, presented as a clean-room reimplementation of Photoshop (layers, masks, styles, brushes, PSD files), running on Windows, macOS, Linux and in the browser through WebAssembly. It belongs to a family of apps from the same developer (vector, video, PDF, layout), all in alpha or in development. What sets it apart: every command can be driven through a headless CLI, a JSON channel or an MCP server, so an agent can use it. Seen in [Instagram reel DeVY_dCJ5h4](https://www.instagram.com/reel/DeVY_dCJ5h4/): the video talks about seven free apps; the project site lists twelve today. According to the developer, the whole thing was built with Claude Opus 5.5: the README says nothing about it.
Strengths
- Everything is drivable without a UI (CLI, JSON channel, MCP server): an agent can use it
- Open code under a permissive licence, cross-platform, with a suite of more than 1,700 tests
- A concrete case of what a coding agent can produce at scale, useful to size up reality
Limitations
- Early alpha: about fifteen tools missing, typography and plugin compatibility lagging
- Many homonymous clones: the risk is cloning or installing the wrong repo
Best for
- Designer or PM who wants to judge the claim "AI recreates any software" on the evidence
- Developer looking for an image editor an agent can drive (CLI, MCP)