A few days ago, we reported on using AI to rewrite 7 Adobe software programs, including Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, etc.Open-source project ArtCraftIt has also started to set its sights on Microsoft Office. Now, on ArtCraft’s GitHub account, there are three more new projects: WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft, corresponding to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint respectively. They are likewise all free and open source, with installers available for download on Windows, Mac, and Linux, and the Word version even comes with a built-in Traditional Chinese interface.
After Adobe, it’s Office’s turn! WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft make their open-source debut, rewriting Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in Rust.
The GitHub pages for the three Office projects WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft were created on October 7, and v0.3.0 was released simultaneously on October 8. All three are clean-room reimplementations of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint built from scratch in Rust, written by referring only to public file format specifications and the software’s actual behavior, without using any Microsoft source code, icons, or templates. All three are dual-licensed under MIT and Apache 2.0, and individuals and companies can use and modify them for free.
In terms of completion, WordCraft is officially estimated at about 62%, GridCraft at about 65%, while DeckCraft is still in the “early development” stage and is roughly 20% away from its first alpha version.
Like the seven in the Adobe series, they were all written using Anthropic’s Claude Opus 5.5. Of WordCraft’s 45 public commits, 35 are tagged “Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 5.5”; GridCraft has 23 of 25, and DeckCraft has 36 of 42. All three projects also include CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md development guidelines.
WordCraft is currently the most complete, and it is the counterpart to Word. It can directly open and save .docx, and also supports .odt, .rtf, .html, Markdown, and plain text; it can also export PDFs with selectable text. The interface is recreated after Word’s Ribbon, and it includes common features such as the style gallery, Format Painter, multilevel lists, table merging and sorting, headers and footers, watermarks, and drop caps. The feature list also includes tables of contents, footnotes, APA/MLA/Chicago/IEEE citation formats for writing reports and papers, as well as Track Changes and comments for reviewing, and even mail merge, envelopes, and labels:
For Taiwanese users, the most practical feature is likely the interface language. WordCraft supports English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, and Japanese, and by default switches according to the system language:
It also has a dark mode. As for performance, the official says that for a 188-page document, reflowing while typing takes only about 1.4 milliseconds:
According to official statistics, 87% of the features on the Word ribbon have already been implemented as executable commands, but if you also factor in feature depth and restoration accuracy, only about 62% truly achieve parity with Word.
As for GridCraft, the counterpart to Excel, its native format is XLSX, and it also supports CSV and TSV. Not only does its calculation engine include more than 500 built-in functions, it also includes advanced functions such as LET, LAMBDA, MAP, REDUCE, and BYROW, which Excel has only added in recent years. It also offers sorting and AutoFilter, Flash Fill, outlining and subtotals, 17 chart types, and Page Break Preview:
GridCraft covers about 89% of Excel’s ribbon and menu commands and about 93% of its worksheet functions, but when weighted by the actual needs of power users, the official estimate is about 65%.
PowerPoint’s DeckCraft is the only one of the three still in “early development stage.” Feature-wise, it currently has slide masters, 11 layouts, 8 original themes, over 150 preset shapes and merge shapes, text, tables, and charts; audio supports MP3, AAC, FLAC, WAV, and other formats, while video supports H.264, HEVC, VP9, and AV1. The transitions used during presentations (including PowerPoint’s signature “Morph” effect), animations and motion paths, Presenter View, pens, and Rehearse Timings are all there:
The app can open and save .pptx files, and export to PDF or images. In terms of completeness, it’s about 79% based on feature breadth, and 93% if only core features are considered.
The status of the three is summarized as follows (GitHub star counts are as of October 10):
| Project | Corresponding software | Main format | Official completion rate | Development Phase | GitHub star count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WordCraft | Word | .docx, .odt, .rtf, PDF export | Ribbon commands 87%, actual parity about 62% | Close to alpha | Approx. 1,860 |
| GridCraft | Excel | .xlsx、CSV、TSV | Instructions 89%, functions 93%, weighted approximately 65% | pre-alpha | Approximately 1,170 |
| DeckCraft | PowerPoint | .pptx, PDF/Image export | Feature breadth 79%, core functionality 93% | Early development | Approximately 960 |
Those who want to try them can download installers for all three from GitHub. Windows has x64, ARM64, and x86 versions, each offering an MSI installer and a portable version; for Mac, there’s a DMG that supports both Intel and Apple chips, officially listed as signed and notarized by Apple. In addition, all three tools offer web versions built with WebAssembly that you can deploy yourself and use through a browser.
WordCraft / GridCraft / DeckCraft
Source: KOCPC Chinese