Developer Brandon Thomas announced three new applications—WordCraft, GridCraft and DeckCraft—that replicate the core functionality of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The projects are hosted on GitHub under permissive MIT and Apache 2.0 licences, allowing anyone to inspect, modify or commercially reuse the code. Written in the systems language Rust, the programs compile to native binaries for Windows, macOS, Linux and BSD, and can also be executed inside a web browser.
Feature coverage and readiness
WordCraft can read and write the.docx format and implements roughly 88% of the ribbon commands found in Word, including track changes, footnotes and mail-merge. The developers estimate the tool is about 60% ready for everyday professional use and label it an alpha release.
GridCraft targets spreadsheet users, supporting 513 of Excel’s 523 functions and about 89% of the ribbon interface. Its creators rate it at 50% readiness, noting that full compatibility with complex.xlsx files remains a priority.
DeckCraft, the presentation program, claims coverage of 79% of PowerPoint’s features and 93% of the essential functions such as transitions, animations and PDF export. It has not yet entered a formal alpha stage.
AI integration
All three applications expose a command hook that can be triggered by an external AI model via the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a standard introduced by Anthropic. In practice, a user could ask Claude to generate a chart, reformat a document or assemble a slide deck without manual interaction. The underlying AI model, Claude Opus 5.5, was launched in September and is priced at $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens.
Pricing and market implications
Microsoft charges $99.99 per year for a personal Microsoft 365 subscription and $129.99 for a family plan, giving users access to the full Office suite. Thomas’s offerings are completely free, providing a direct cost alternative while preserving file-format compatibility. Historically, free Office suites such as OpenOffice.org and LibreOffice have required years of community development; Thomas delivered functional clones within weeks, leveraging AI-driven code generation.
Why it matters
The emergence of AI-assisted, open-source office software could reshape the economics of productivity tools. By delivering a low-cost, cross-platform alternative that integrates conversational AI, these clones may pressure Microsoft to reconsider pricing or feature strategies. At the same time, the early-stage stability of the projects means enterprises will need to weigh risk against savings, while developers gain a new, Rust-based codebase for experimentation and commercial reuse.
