AI-generated clones of Word, Excel and PowerPoint now available: the ArtCraft project on GitHub

AI agent fleets are very capable these days, and latest proof is the creation of various ArtCraft project applications, including MIT-licensed free alternatives to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The source code, written in Rust, is also available on GitHub on the StoryTold account. The repo for the Word copy, called WordCraft, was created on October 6, so this is brand-new stuff.

Technically, it is an impressive achievement, but what I find most interesting is that fact that the codebase is fully testable but also features a CLI tool and AI-age support for MCP (Model Context Protocol).

For example, with WordCraft (the Microsoft Word clone), this would allow better automation, with immediate needs from my own work: converting Word documents to PDFs (currently manual) or Markdown (.md files, not currently available without external tools).

When looking at the big picture, the obvious question is that will private persons and companies continue to pay for Microsoft classic software applications now that free alternatives are available. Most likely, they will.

But the more interesting questions in my mind are instead:

1. Are developers building Word (or any other product) clones because users will continue to need Word-like applications?
2. Are we using well-defined and widely-known targets against which an AI-assisted developer can demonstrate astonishing productivity?

My take is that Word-like applications are needed in the future, but in the age of AI, I'm thinking we instead need something else. Just like in software development, the act of typing code was never the desired end-result, and now AI has changed this. Similarly, with generic text, using Word(Craft) is just the tool to write something you need: a letter, a memo, or a novel.