Claude Code Ran 6 Free Adobe Alternatives (ArtCraft). Worked or Just Hype?

Claude Code tested ArtCraft's six free, open-source Adobe alternatives — PhotoCraft, LightCraft, VectorCraft, EffectCraft, SoundCraft and FilmCraft — by making a 30-second short with them: 0 ArtCraft credits, about 3 minutes end to end on one laptop.

Four things broke. One said "success" and cut the wrong part of the photo. Free guide, setup repo and every command below.

Free PDF guide (the full map, every command, the one prompt to paste into Claude Code, everything that broke): https://qualixar.com/learn/guides/claude-code-6-free-adobe-alternatives — free with a qualixar.com account

Setup repo (developers, clone it): https://github.com/qualixar/craft-studio-setup

CHAPTERS

0:00 This short was made by Claude Code

1:05 LightCraft: four photos, one look (MCP explained)

2:04 PhotoCraft: merge, then Remove Background said "success"

3:16 Two ways in: developer vs creator setup

4:34 VectorCraft: three jobs against the clock

5:24 EffectCraft: before and after, no auto-reframe

6:13 SoundCraft: a music bed, a drawn volume curve

7:12 FilmCraft: the cut, and the clock (~3 min cold)

8:13 The free shelf: OmniVoice, HyperFrames, Whisper, Blender & more

9:38 Free apps, an Upgrade button: I read the code

10:59 The ledger: money, time, what broke

12:04 The whole machine (and this film came out of it)

TOOLS IN THIS VIDEO

ArtCraft (the six apps) — https://github.com/storytold/artcraft

PhotoCraft — https://github.com/storytold/photocraft

LightCraft — https://github.com/storytold/lightcraft

VectorCraft — https://github.com/storytold/vectorcraft

EffectCraft — https://github.com/storytold/effectcraft

SoundCraft — https://github.com/storytold/soundcraft

FilmCraft — https://github.com/storytold/filmcraft

Claude Code — https://github.com/anthropics/claude-code

MCP, Model Context Protocol (one MCP server per app) — https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol

OmniVoice (local voice clone) — https://github.com/k2-fsa/OmniVoice

HyperFrames (HTML → video) — https://github.com/heygen-com/hyperframes

Blender — https://github.com/blender/blender

Manim — https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim

Whisper (word timings, captions) — https://github.com/openai/whisper

Demucs (stem splitting) — https://github.com/adefossez/demucs

CLAP (sound search by text) — https://github.com/LAION-AI/CLAP

ffmpeg (loudness, conversions) — https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg

yt-dlp (research only) — https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp

Playwright CLI (website clips) — https://github.com/microsoft/playwright-cli

gpt-image-2 (the short's pictures, on a ChatGPT plan I already pay for)

Google Flow (my face clips only)

Every number on screen comes from a run we recorded (22 Oct 2026). App versions tested: PhotoCraft 0.12.0, LightCraft 0.11.0, VectorCraft 0.14.0, EffectCraft 0.14.0, SoundCraft 0.11.0, FilmCraft 0.10.0. These apps are alpha / in development, by their own READMEs.

Next video (Tue 3 Nov): the seven office apps — proposals, invoices, decks, floor plans. In two of them a command did nothing and said nothing.

Qualixar · AI Reliability Engineering — we test the hype ourselves.

#ClaudeCode #ArtCraft #AdobeAlternative