Free open-source clones of Excel, PowerPoint and Word join the ArtCraft suite

Free replacements for Excel, PowerPoint and Word

Brandon Thomas, the developer behind ArtCraft — a suite of open-source applications built as free stand-ins for Adobe's creative software — has expanded the project into Microsoft's territory. According to Tom's Hardware, he has released three new programs: GridCraft for spreadsheets, DeckCraft for presentations, and WordCraft for word processing, positioned as replacements for Excel, PowerPoint and Word respectively.

All three have been added to the ArtCraft project on GitHub and are free for anyone to download, the report says. The approach mirrors the one that made the original ArtCraft tools popular: take a product that users normally pay a subscription for and offer an open-source version at no cost.

Built with Claude, and the debate that follows

Tom's Hardware notes that the new applications were created with Claude, the AI coding assistant, a detail that places the release squarely inside the ongoing argument over AI-assisted development.

The earlier ArtCraft project drew criticism as it gained popularity, with commenters branding the work "vibecoded" — a pejorative for software largely generated by an AI model rather than carefully engineered — or dismissing it outright as "AI slop." Thomas pushed back on X, saying that he does know how to code. Tom's Hardware, which identified him as the Reddit user u/ai_art_is_art after its previous coverage, describes him as a software engineer with fifteen years of experience.

The criticism is not purely cosmetic. Office applications are among the most heavily used programs in the world, and users tend to be unforgiving about crashes, formatting glitches or files that fail to open correctly elsewhere.

Autodesk may be next

The report's headline points to where the project could go from here: open-source replications of Autodesk's tools, and possibly other subscription-based services, may come next. That would extend the effort beyond creative and productivity software into professional CAD and 3D design, a market that has moved decisively toward subscription pricing.

Why it matters

The release tests two propositions at once. The first is whether AI-assisted development can produce office applications fit for daily use — a demanding standard, because spreadsheets, decks and documents must handle Microsoft's file formats reliably enough that files move between programs without breaking. The second is whether an open-source suite assembled largely with an AI assistant can win users against alternatives backed by years of engineering and compatibility work.

For the broader software ecosystem, the project is a data point in a debate about changing economics. If a single developer, supported by an AI coding assistant, can ship working replicas of Word, Excel and PowerPoint and give them away for free, the cost of building alternatives to entrenched subscription products is falling fast. The "vibecoding" label will follow every such release, but the question that ultimately decides this project's fate is simpler: whether the applications work well enough that people keep using them.