REA ≠ PhotoCraft: The Photoshop Clone Misconception
Two repos exploded on GitHub in the same two weeks: PhotoCraft, an AI-built Photoshop clone, and REA, Reverse Engineer Anything. Many people told it as one story: "the AI used REA to take Photoshop apart". That's not what happened. The ArtCraft developer says on Hacker News that Ghidra is disallowed in the project: no REA, no decompiling. In this video I explain the two ways to copy software, white box vs clean room, why that difference matters legally, and the four ingredients behind PhotoCraft: clean-room rules for the agents, an architecture where everything is a command, an agent team working in parallel, and the "oracle" that checks every render against Photoshop's own answer. Plus a reality check with their own parity numbers. Chapters 0:00 Two repos, one wrong story 0:38 White box vs clean room 0:55 REA recap 1:29 Why white box is dangerous for an Adobe clone 2:12 ArtCraft: seven apps in two days 2:38 Ingredient 1: rules the agent reads first 3:19 Ingredient 2: everything is a command 3:54 Ingredient 3: an agent team 4:23 Ingredient 4: the oracle 4:52 REA uses the same trick 5:19 Reality check: is it Photoshop? 6:00 TL;DR: REA ≠ PhotoCraft Sources - PhotoCraft repository: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft - PhotoCraft AGENTS.md (clean-room rule): https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/blob/main/AGENTS.md - PhotoCraft parity assessment: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/blob/main/docs/target-app-parity.md - PhotoCraft architecture: https://github.com/storytold/photocraft/blob/main/docs/architecture.md - REA (Reverse Engineer Anything): https://github.com/morluto/rea - Hacker News, ArtCraft founder on REA and Ghidra: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50029110 - Flowtivity: https://flowtivity.ai/blog/adobe-rust-cleanroom-clones/ - Kingy.ai: https://kingy.ai/blog/ai-reverse-engineering-artcraft-adobe/ - innFactory: https://innfactory.ai/en/blog/ai-rebuilt-photoshop-word-reverse-engineering/ - TechSpot: https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html Parity numbers are the project's own self-assessment (as of Oct 10, 2026), not independent tests. The clean-room claim is the developer's own statement. I'm not a lawyer; nothing here is legal advice. Screenshots of repositories and articles are shown for commentary. Photoshop and Adobe are trademarks of Adobe; ArtCraft/PhotoCraft are independent projects. My previous video, where I tested REA on Red Alert: https://youtu.be/EPHVoBA7JoM