Rewriting apps with AI

I wrote recently about a wave of vibe-coded apps replacing proprietary utilities with slicker faster and less bloated free alternatives. A month ago we were talking about smaller helpers, like mouse button remapping, but it has already started getting bigger with external camera monitor or audio streaming.

The scale of operation has got significantly bigger now. ArtCraft is a suite of apps reimplementing the functionality of the whole Adobe Creative Suite (think image, photo, sound, and video editing, effects and publishing), Microsoft Office Suite (word processing, presentations and spreadsheets), and CAD (industry 3D design).

I’m completely mind-blown. But…

These apps are rewrites of existing apps.

As any re-implementation from scratch, using modern tech stack, the apps may be faster. At the same time they may lack some rarely used features, but, hey, they are also open-source, so you can ask your favorite agent to add the missing feature you desperately need for your workflow.

So, where is the but, I was talking about?

These apps are rewrites of existing apps.

They don’t bring new ideas, new ways of doing things. They exploit the capability of LLMs to reiterate as many times as possible to repeat what has already been done.

The real challenge would be what comes after that. When all features are recreated as close as possible to the original, who would come up with the next brilliant idea? Who would invent new ways of doing things? Who would reimagine workflows and outcomes?

If code is cheap and the bottleneck in software development is solved, the future belongs to those with ideas and visions, not to those who can type the code.

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