Developer Brandon Thomas has released early-stage, AI-built alternatives to Word, Excel and PowerPoint, but compatibility and unfinished features remain major hurdles.
Brandon Thomas, the developer who previously drew attention for building AI-assisted replicas of Adobe creative software, has turned his attention to Microsoft’s productivity suite. He has released three open-source applications – WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft – that are intended to mirror Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and has made them available on GitHub under permissive licences that allow modification and commercial use. Windows Central and TechSpot reported that the tools were built with Anthropic’s Claude AI and are positioned as free alternatives to Microsoft 365.
The projects are still at an early stage, and Thomas has been explicit about their limitations. According to the figures shared across the reports, WordCraft is in alpha and covers roughly 60% of Word’s capabilities, GridCraft supports 513 worksheet functions and is about 50% complete, while DeckCraft appears furthest along, with about 79% of PowerPoint’s features covered and 93% of basic functionality implemented. That makes DeckCraft the most immediately usable of the three, although all remain unfinished and are not yet production-ready.
The technical choice behind the suite is notable. Thomas built the applications in Rust, a language valued for speed and memory safety, and designed them to work on Windows and macOS. Several reports said the software was developed from public file-format specifications rather than Microsoft source code, following a clean-room style approach intended to reduce legal risk. He has also built the tools to work with the Model Context Protocol, which allows AI agents to carry out tasks such as document formatting or chart creation more directly than in older office suites.
The release places Thomas in a growing group of developers using generative AI to recreate established commercial software at speed. His earlier ArtCraft project, which recreated Adobe applications, drew similar attention, and the new office suite raises the same questions about whether open-source, AI-built alternatives can become reliable enough for everyday work. Microsoft’s subscription pricing gives the project a clear target, but compatibility with real-world documents, especially files containing embedded objects, macros and complex formatting, remains the decisive test.
Disclaimer: This content is intended for informational purposes only. Readers are advised to exercise their own judgement, conduct due diligence, or consult a qualified expert before acting on any information provided.
