Engineer Brandon Thomas released open-source clones of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, branded as WordCraft, GridCraft, and DeckCraft. The applications are written in Rust and utilize Anthropic's Claude AI for development.
The software is published on GitHub under MIT and Apache 2.0 licenses. The project uses a clean-room design approach, relying on public file-format specifications rather than copying proprietary Microsoft code.
WordCraft supports 88% of Word ribbon features and reads .docx files, though it is currently in alpha stage. GridCraft implements 513 of 523 Excel worksheet functions, while DeckCraft covers 79% of PowerPoint features.
The tools integrate with the Model Context Protocol, allowing AI agents to perform multi-step tasks within the applications. As of Wednesday, the WordCraft repository had surpassed 12,000 stars on GitHub.
These releases follow the developer's previous ArtCraft project, which mirrored Adobe Creative Cloud tools. The new suite aims to provide a free alternative to Microsoft 365, which costs $99.99 to $129.99 annually.
