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  "id": "com.gtmstacker.registry/tool/photocraft",
  "type": "tool",
  "slug": "photocraft",
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  "title": "PhotoCraft",
  "description": "PhotoCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust, built to be driven by agents: every tool runs a command from one registry of 500+ commands, and the GUI, a headless CLI (photocraft-cli), a JSON control channel, and an MCP server all call the same commands, so anything you can click a script or an agent can do too. Dual MIT/Apache-2.0; self-hostable. Free. Published 2026-09-30; ~14.5k stars but brand new and unproven in production.",
  "category": "content-copywriting",
  "tags": [
    "content-copywriting",
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    "image-editing",
    "creative-ops",
    "self-hostable",
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  "date_published": "2026-10-06T00:00:00Z",
  "date_modified": "2026-10-06T00:00:00Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "storytold/photocraft · X (@Voxyz_ai) / GitHub",
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  "license": "Apache-2.0",
  "one_liner": "PhotoCraft is an MIT/Apache-2.0 self-hostable Photoshop reimplementation with a headless CLI and an MCP server, so agents can run layer edits and batch jobs.",
  "open_source": "yes",
  "self_hostable": "yes",
  "pricing_model": "free",
  "who_its_for": "A lean marketing or content team that wants scriptable, agent-drivable image editing (ad creative, social graphics, batch exports) without an Adobe subscription, run on its own machine and callable from the same agents (Claude Code, Codex) that already run the rest of the stack.",
  "who_its_not_for": "A team that needs proven, production-grade Photoshop feature parity and vendor support today (it was published 2026-09-30 and is unproven), or a non-technical user who only wants a polished, supported GUI.",
  "aliases": [
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  "secondary_categories": [
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  "last_verified": "2026-10-08",
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    "source_id": "https://github.com/storytold/photocraft",
    "note": "Dual MIT/Apache-2.0 + repo metadata from the GitHub API, not guessed: storytold/photocraft, created 2026-09-30, pushed 2026-10-07, not archived, ~14485 stars, Rust (verified 2026-10-08). README (read 2026-10-08) confirms a headless CLI (photocraft-cli run/batch), an MCP server (photocraft-cli mcp), a loopback control channel, and one registry of 500+ commands shared by UI, CLI, JSON channel, and MCP. Surfaced via X (@Voxyz_ai) + the discovery pull, 2026-10-08."
  },
  "caveats": "Verified from the primary repo and README (2026-10-08); no independent testing here. Brand new (created 2026-09-30): the ~14.5k stars are attention, not proven maturity, and 'clean-room reimplementation of Photoshop' is the goal, not a guarantee of feature parity. Confirm the specific filters, adjustment layers, or export formats you need exist before relying on it. The agent-native path is the CLI and MCP server, not the GUI.",
  "lead": "PhotoCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust, built from the start to be driven by agents as well as by a person. Every menu item, tool, and dialog runs a command from one registry of more than 500 commands, and the desktop GUI, a headless…",
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      "est_tokens": 152,
      "text": "PhotoCraft is an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust, built from the start to be driven by agents as well as by a person. Every menu item, tool, and dialog runs a command from one registry of more than 500 commands, and the desktop GUI, a headless CLI, a JSON control channel, and an MCP server all call the same commands. Anything you can click, a script or an AI agent can do too. Open source: yes (dual MIT or Apache-2.0); self-hostable; free. It was published 2026-09-30 and, while it has drawn roughly 14.5k stars quickly, it is brand new and unproven in production."
    },
    {
      "index": 1,
      "heading_path": [
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        "What it does"
      ],
      "est_tokens": 306,
      "text": "MCP server all call the same commands. Anything you can click, a script or an AI agent can do too. Open source: yes (dual MIT or Apache-2.0); self-hostable; free. It was published 2026-09-30 and, while it has drawn roughly 14.5k stars quickly, it is brand new and unproven in production.\n\nPhotoCraft gives a lean content team layered image editing (filters, adjustment layers, curves, masks, exports) that runs on their own machine instead of behind an Adobe subscription, and makes that editing programmable. The CLI runs headless: `photocraft-cli run wave.psd --cmd filter.sharpen.smartSharpen --params '{\"amount\":80}' --cmd layer.newAdjustmentLayer.curves --out wave-final.png`, and `photocraft-cli batch` applies one action list to a whole folder of images. The MCP server (`photocraft-cli mcp`) lets an agent drive the application through the Model Context Protocol, either fully headless or bridged to a running app, and an authenticated loopback control channel exposes UI state, pointer-driven tooling, and offscreen screenshots. Because the UI, the CLI, the JSON channel, and the MCP server all dispatch the same 500-plus commands, a workflow an operator builds by hand is the same one an agent can repeat at scale."
    },
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      ],
      "est_tokens": 253,
      "text": "app, and an authenticated loopback control channel exposes UI state, pointer-driven tooling, and offscreen screenshots. Because the UI, the CLI, the JSON channel, and the MCP server all dispatch the same 500-plus commands, a workflow an operator builds by hand is the same one an agent can repeat at scale.\n\n- Dual MIT/Apache-2.0 per repo (license and metadata read from the GitHub API, not guessed); storytold/photocraft; created 2026-09-30; pushed 2026-10-07; not archived; ~14485 stars; Rust (verified 2026-10-08).\n- README (maker-stated, read 2026-10-08): a clean-room Photoshop reimplementation; one registry of 500+ commands shared by GUI, `photocraft-cli` (headless `run` and `batch`), a JSON control channel, and an MCP server (`photocraft-cli mcp`); authenticated loopback control channel for UI inspection and automation.\n- Surfaced in the GTM Stacker signal run (2026-10-08 pass) via an X post and the discovery lane; license and repo facts re-verified against the GitHub repo and README 2026-10-08."
    },
    {
      "index": 3,
      "heading_path": [
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        "Why it matters for a GTM stack"
      ],
      "est_tokens": 283,
      "text": "`batch`), a JSON control channel, and an MCP server (`photocraft-cli mcp`); authenticated loopback control channel for UI inspection and automation. - Surfaced in the GTM Stacker signal run (2026-10-08 pass) via an X post and the discovery lane; license and repo facts re-verified against the GitHub repo and README 2026-10-08.\n\nCreative production is one of the places a lean GTM team still rents expensive, closed software and still does the work by hand. PhotoCraft's bet is that image editing can be both owned (a self-hosted, license-clean app) and automated (a CLI and an MCP server an agent can call), so the same agents that already run scraping, enrichment, or reporting can also produce and batch-edit ad creative and social graphics. The honest read: it is days old and unproven, it is a reimplementation chasing Photoshop rather than a settled product, and feature parity is a goal rather than a promise. But for a technical operator who wants agent-native creative tooling they own, the shared-command design (click it once, script it forever) is exactly the shape the rest of an owned, agent-driven stack already has."
    }
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