What was released
ArtCraft, the studio run by Brandon Thomas, has published WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft on GitHub as open-source clones of Word, Excel and PowerPoint written in Rust. The repositories call them clean-room reimplementations. That means they were written from public file-format specifications, not Microsoft code. Each project says it isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.
Timeline and licensing, per the repositories and press coverage:
- Licensing: The repositories list Apache-2.0 and MIT, at your choice.
- Platforms: The projects describe desktop builds for macOS, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, plus browser builds. Coverage notes that v0.5.0 arrived between October 10 and 11 for all three apps, with a Linux build for RISC-V processors too.
- Versions: GridCraft v0.5.0 was released October 10 at 23:50 UTC, per its releases page. The 0.x numbering is the first hint about maturity.
- Popularity: As of October 11 WordCraft has 3,564 GitHub stars, GridCraft 2,028 and DeckCraft 1,535.
What each app claims to do
WordCraft (Word). It reads and saves .docx. The project also lists .odt, RTF, HTML, Markdown, LaTeX and plain text, with PDF export. Its feature list includes styles, tables, track changes, comments, citations, mail merge, and spelling and grammar tools. Its roadmap says citation styles now cover 12 of Word's formats. That check was not part of the roadmap snapshot I verified, so treat it with caution.
GridCraft (Excel). It covers formulas, tables, charts and PivotTables. Its repository claims support for 501 of Excel's 523 worksheet functions. Release notes for v0.5.0 show the sort of work going on: fixes for merged-cell text disappearing, ROUND precision, spill-range behaviour, and XLSX writing quirks. They also add XLSB and ODS import. A function count is not the same as faithful behaviour on a complicated workbook.
DeckCraft (PowerPoint). Per its repository, it builds decks with themes, layouts, shapes, pictures, tables, charts, transitions and animations. It opens and saves PowerPoint files and presents full screen. It also lists PDF, PNG and JPEG export, basic SmartArt and a presenter view.
The candid part: alpha, by the developers' own admission
WordCraft's roadmap labels it alpha and puts it at roughly 60% ready for real work. It says the target is Word for Mac 16.113.4. It also explains why it isn't beta yet:
- DOCX has not been tested on real-world files.
- Charts, SmartArt and OLE objects have been dropped silently, though a later log entry says charts, SmartArt and OLE objects now survive open and save (#319).
- Pagination differs from Word.
- There are stability and printing gaps.
GridCraft's own roadmap pegs it at about 50% ready. It names real-world XLSX fidelity, very large workbooks, chart depth and .xls import as unfinished. Other coverage reports slightly different headline numbers, such as about 62 percent overall for "real feature parity" in WordCraft. That figure comes from an earlier snapshot, and the project re-measures often. Don't rely on any single percentage.
A "reads and writes DOCX" claim should be read as "can open and save." It does not mean "your colleague's 80-page contract will come back looking identical." Those are different promises, and anyone who has traded Word files with a rival suite knows the difference.
Windows-specific notes
GridCraft's repository says the Windows desktop app starts with DirectX 12 by default. Its README documents a workaround for graphics-driver startup trouble: set the WGPU_BACKEND environment variable to vulkan in PowerShell. WordCraft's roadmap also mentions an OpenGL fallback for Windows PCs without a DirectX 12 driver. Both come from project documentation, and I haven't reproduced them.
How to try them safely
This is common-sense guidance based on the projects' alpha status, not a procedure the developers published:
- Work on copies of your documents, never the originals.
- Open a representative file: formulas, pivot tables, tracked changes, embedded charts and so on.
- Save under a new filename.
- Reopen the result in Microsoft Office and compare formatting, formulas and objects.
- Don't assume macros/VBA, external data connections or advanced Office features carry over. The checked documentation doesn't establish that they do.
- Read the latest release notes before installing. These projects are shipping several releases a day.
Context: the "protest" framing and the AI question
Tom's Hardware frames the project as a protest against subscription software. Thomas's own motives aren't stated in the repositories I checked, so that reading is the outlet's interpretation. The AI angle is also contested. Tom's Hardware reports that Thomas defended his coding ability on X after "vibecoding" criticism. Another outlet notes that the GitHub development history lists "Claude Opus 5.5" as a co-author. The repositories also contain CLAUDE.md and AGENTS.md files. Separately, the programs were designed so AI agents can issue commands directly to their engines.
Tom's earlier coverage cites a survey in which most developers say they don't fully trust AI-generated code. That is a fair concern for software that parses untrusted files, and file handling is exactly where bugs bite. Open source helps, since anyone can audit the code, but a fast-moving codebase is hard to review.
Bottom line
For Windows and Microsoft 365 shops, this is worth watching rather than deploying. Most of the enterprise value of Office lies in fidelity, compatibility and management, and these apps are explicitly unfinished on all three. Hobbyists, Linux users and tinkerers have a free, permissively licensed playground. Microsoft doesn't need to panic yet. But a project this young that already has thousands of stars and daily releases is a reminder that file-format specs, plus AI-assisted development, can produce a lot of software quickly.