Who is Brandon Thomas, the developer behind ArtCraft?
- Software engineer with about 15 years of experience and roughly a decade of Rust (CineD, Visualounge).
- Former Square engineer; spent three years as chief executive of Storyteller.ai, the company behind the FakeYou voice platform.
- Founded ArtCraft in 2025, initially for himself, friends and colleagues.
- Says he used Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5 to write the Crafting Apps.
Background
According to Visualounge, Thomas is a fifteen-year industry veteran who has built payment rails moving billions of dollars a day, as well as robotics and optics automation. He worked as a software engineer at Square and was chief executive of Storyteller.ai for three years. CineD notes that Storyteller.ai is the company behind FakeYou.
ArtCraft began as an AI image and video tool. CineD reports that its paid token business funds the free apps.
How the apps were built
Thomas says the seven Adobe-style apps were rebuilt from scratch in Rust with Claude Opus 5.5 writing the code, as a clean-room reimplementation with no Adobe code. He has said he did not intend to make the repositories public as early as he did, and that the apps are alpha software.
Not every outlet tells the story the same way: Futurism (October 8, 2026) describes ArtCraft as built by a four-person team and quotes co-founder Michael Caffrey: “We were shocked by how well they actually worked internally, so decided to open source them.”
What he has said
- On why Adobe: he had “stumbled over the dark pattern ‘cancellation fee’ one too many times.”
- On readiness (Hacker News): the apps are “not anywhere close to ready.”
- On the bigger picture: AI coding tools let small teams build near-identical open-source versions of paid software — “software is over.”
- On what’s next: he has named AutoCAD and SolidWorks as further targets (CineD).
Brandon Thomas ArtCraft GitHub and downloads
The project’s code is under the storytold organization on GitHub rather than a personal account. See our GitHub page for each repository and the download guide for installers.
FAQ
Did Brandon Thomas build ArtCraft alone?
Most coverage credits him as the developer. Futurism describes a four-person team and quotes a co-founder, Michael Caffrey. Both descriptions appear in reputable coverage.
Which AI did he use?
Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5, according to his own statements as reported by CineD, Visualounge and LinuxCompatible.
Does Brandon Thomas work for Adobe?
No. ArtCraft is independent and not affiliated with Adobe.
Unofficial, independent guide. Not affiliated with ArtCraft, storytold / Storyteller.ai, or Adobe Inc. Adobe, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, After Effects, InDesign and Acrobat are trademarks of Adobe. We host no software — all downloads link to the official project.