Open-Source AI 2026: ArtCraft, OpenClaw and More Projects

Open source runs under my own projects: my game Noční linka is built on Godot 4.7.1 (MIT licence) and its models are rendered in Blender (source code under the GPL). With AI the situation is more complicated, because "open source" is used more loosely than it seems. This overview collects the projects people are talking about most in October 2026, including ArtCraft, a set of open-source replacements for Adobe applications that was built with heavy help from AI. I verified licences, stars and releases on 20 October 2026 on GitHub and in the projects' documentation; all figures describe the state on the stated date, not on the day this article was published. I give my own experience only where I have it (Godot, Blender, Codex); the other projects I describe from their documentation, and I did not run them for this article.

What does open source mean for AI?

Under the Open Source AI Definition 1.0 from the OSI a system must give four freedoms: to use it for any purpose, to study it, to modify it and to share it. For it to be genuinely modifiable, the "preferred form for making modifications" has to include three things: enough information about the training data, the complete code used to train and run it, and the model parameters, meaning the weights.

In practice many "open" models publish only the weights, often under a custom licence, and that is open weights rather than open source. So I always separate three layers: the licence of the tool (for example Ollama, MIT), the licence of the model the tool runs, and what you may do with the output. Two examples where it matters are below: Open WebUI and the Hunyuan3D model.

Which open-source AI projects are worth a look?

The table lists the projects people search for most in October 2026, or that I use. Licences and stars are from GitHub on 20 October 2026, with stars rounded down.

Open WebUI does not have a classic OSI-approved licence, which I come back to in the section on local models.

What is ArtCraft and can it replace Adobe?

It is the newest item in the overview, and therefore the longest part of the article. According to its official website, ArtCraft is a team building open-source tools for creators. Two different things get mixed under one name in the media:

• The Craft apps (Crafting Apps): desktop applications written from scratch in Rust. The website lists 13 of them, from an image editor to spreadsheets and CAD.
• ArtCraft studio: an older project, an AI studio for images and video. According to its README it composes scenes in 2D and 3D and then generates them through a catalogue of 62 models from various providers. The studio's repository has existed since 2022, and the repositories of the Craft apps appeared on 30 September 2026 and later.

The seven applications listed in the PhotoCraft README look like this:

Only the PhotoCraft README names an Adobe counterpart explicitly (Photoshop); the other pairings come from media descriptions, for example Dieline. As of 20 October 2026 no version had reached 1.0. As of 22 October 2026 the website labels only PhotoCraft, PdfCraft and FigCraft as "early alpha" and the rest as "in development".

What is the licence, what does it run on and what does it cost?

The READMEs of PhotoCraft and ArtCraft studio state a dual licence, MIT or Apache-2.0 at the user's option. The ArtCraft name and logos are trademarks that the licence does not cover. PhotoCraft runs on Windows (x64, arm64, x86), macOS, Linux and FreeBSD, and in the browser through WebAssembly. According to its README, ArtCraft studio has stable releases for Windows and macOS, while on Linux you have to build it from source.

According to the website the Craft apps are free. What costs money is AI generation through cloud models: the pricing page offers an optional subscription with monthly credits and states explicitly that ArtCraft can be used without one. For how credits and limits work in AI subscriptions in general, see my article on subscriptions, credits and resets.

How does AI figure in it?

In two ways, and both can be documented.

It was built with the help of AI agents. The PhotoCraft ROADMAP.md counts the remaining work in hours of a single agent running the Opus 5.5 model and calibrates it from 1,004 merged pull requests (the ROADMAP figure as of 13 October 2026). The repository contains an AGENTS.md file meant for AI agents and contributors. Dieline writes about a project created by "vibe coding" with Anthropic's Claude. What such a model looks like in practice is in my article on Claude Opus 5.5.

The apps can be controlled by an agent. According to the README, every menu item, tool and dialog in PhotoCraft runs a command from one registry of more than 500 commands. The interface, the command line, a JSON channel and an MCP server all call the same commands, so anything you can click, a script or an AI agent can do too. The app's control channel is authenticated and listens only on the local loopback. For MCP and its risks, see the article Blender and AI.

The AI features inside the apps, by contrast, are the biggest gap: among the main missing things the README lists generative features, and the ROADMAP puts them at 10% done. According to the README, smart selection runs on your computer, with no cloud and no account.

What state is it in?

The PhotoCraft README itself says it is in early alpha and not yet a Photoshop replacement for daily professional work. The ROADMAP.md (last updated 13 October 2026) gives numbers the authors estimated themselves:

Three more figures from the same file are worth noting: 953 open issues, 3 of 25 performance budgets met, and PSD files that PhotoCraft writes are not yet reliably accepted by Photoshop (issues 1281 and 2469). The estimate to full parity is 2,300 to 4,100 hours of agent work, with AI and plug-ins still needing decisions from the owners, according to the authors.

What does the media say?

This is the opinion of the media, not my measurement.

• XDA Developers (Dhruv Bhutani, 13 October 2026): the reviewer is intrigued but is not cancelling his Adobe subscription yet. He likes LightCraft because it resembles Lightroom, including shortcuts and non-destructive edits. He rates PhotoCraft as a strong, local and fast alternative to Photopea for simpler tasks. RAW compatibility is uneven (DNG files from a Sony A7III worked, photos from an older Panasonic rendered differently), colours differ from Adobe, and the video app is the least mature: with LOG footage he saw a laggy timeline and broken audio. He describes control through MCP with Claude more as a possibility, and says video editing that way is not finished yet. He sees the author's goal as full parity within a month or two of the review date (13 October 2026), but suspects it will take longer.
• Dieline (Rudy Sanchez, 8 October 2026): describes the project as a challenge to Adobe and states a goal of matching its software by the end of the year. The article is behind a paywall, and I read only its opening.

Who does it make sense for?

In my opinion, without testing it myself: based on the state on 20 October 2026, I would try the Craft apps alongside Adobe, not instead of it. They make sense for non-critical projects, for curiosity, and for people who want a local app with no account and no cloud. I would not rely on them for jobs with a deadline, for exchanging PSD files with people on Photoshop, or for production video. Among the shipped UI languages of PhotoCraft, according to the roadmap, is Czech, but engine messages are still English everywhere.

How do you run AI locally: Ollama, llama.cpp and Open WebUI?

Ollama (GitHub, MIT) runs models on your computer. The README shows how to run the Gemma 4 model and points to the model library for the full list, which on 22 October 2026 includes, among others, the Kimi, GLM, MiniMax, DeepSeek, gpt-oss, Qwen and Gemma families. It runs on macOS, Windows, Linux and in Docker, offers a REST API at localhost:11434 and is built on llama.cpp. The ollama launch command connects Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode and OpenClaw.

llama.cpp (GitHub, MIT) is the engine underneath. It runs models in C/C++ with minimal setup, on the CPU (AVX, ARM NEON) and the GPU (CUDA, HIP, Vulkan, SYCL, Metal). It supports hybrid CPU plus GPU operation for models larger than GPU memory and quantisation from 1.5 to 8 bits. It includes a server compatible with the OpenAI API.

Open WebUI (GitHub) is a self-hosted interface for Ollama and OpenAI-compatible APIs (LM Studio, OpenRouter, vLLM). It has an offline mode, RAG and tools through MCP and OpenAPI. Mind the licence: the Open WebUI License forbids changing or removing the "Open WebUI" branding, with exceptions. You may change it for a deployment with at most 50 end users in a rolling 30-day period, with prior written permission, or with an enterprise licence. A company that wants its own branding has to sort that out in advance.

Running a local model in a company, meaning hardware, data and the legal side, is covered in the article Local AI models for companies.

What should you use for images, video and 3D: ComfyUI?

ComfyUI (GitHub, GPL-3.0) is a node-based interface, API and backend for diffusion models. According to the README it handles images (SD 1.5, SDXL, Flux, Qwen Image), edits (Flux Kontext, Qwen Image Edit), video (Wan 2.1 and 2.2, LTX-Video, HunyuanVideo), audio (ACE-Step, Stable Audio) and 3D (Hunyuan3D 2.1). A desktop app exists for Windows and macOS. The README claims that large models will run on roughly 4 GB of GPU memory and 8 GB of RAM, which is the project's claim and which I did not measure.

Two licence warnings. GPL-3.0 is copyleft: if you distribute a modified version, you must make the source code available. And model licences are separate: the licence of the Hunyuan3D 2.1 model explicitly does not apply in the European Union, the United Kingdom and South Korea. According to the licence text, use outside the defined territory is unlicensed, so in the Czech Republic you cannot rely on it.

For 3D in Blender there is an official Blender MCP (add-on 1.0.3, Blender 5.1 and newer). Blender itself warns that the server runs code generated by a language model with no safeguards against deleting or sending out data, and recommends a virtual machine or a system with no sensitive data. I compare scripts and MCP in the article Blender and AI. Commercial image and video generators are compared in The best AI image generators and AI video models and pricing.

Which open-source coding agents exist?

• OpenCode (GitHub, MIT): an open-source coding agent for the terminal, a desktop app (beta for macOS, Windows x64 and Linux) and IDEs. It works with any model provider through API keys (documentation). On Windows it recommends WSL, and the /init command creates an AGENTS.md file.
• Codex CLI (GitHub, Apache-2.0): an agent from OpenAI that runs locally on your computer. You install it through npm, a script or Homebrew.
• Gemini CLI (GitHub, Apache-2.0): Google's agent in the terminal, taking context from GEMINI.md files. The README says that for users without a paid plan and for Google One it was replaced by Antigravity CLI on 18 June 2026.

Claude Code is not open source. I use it daily alongside Codex, whose CLI is open source. How agents work and how they differ from the model is explained in the article on the harness.

The common language of these tools is becoming more open: on 9 December 2025 Anthropic donated MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation. The co-founders are Anthropic, Block and OpenAI, and the founding projects include AGENTS.md. In that announcement of 9 December 2025 Anthropic reports more than 10,000 active public MCP servers, a figure from the vendor and from December 2025.

What is OpenClaw and how does it differ from Hermes Agent?

OpenClaw (GitHub, documentation, MIT) is a self-hosted gateway between chat apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord, Signal, iMessage, Microsoft Teams, Matrix, Google Chat) and an AI agent. It works with any model, meaning a provider's API key or a local model. It requires Node 24.16 or newer, or 26.1 or newer (version 26 is recommended), and the dashboard runs at 127.0.0.1:18789. It is developed by the OpenClaw Foundation, which according to the README is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit. It has the most stars among the AI agents in the overview.

Hermes Agent (GitHub, MIT) from Nous Research is a different type: it has persistent memory, saves procedures as skills, and offers a cron scheduler and subagents. It provides a terminal interface and a gateway for Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Signal and email, plus a desktop app. You can choose the provider: Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI or your own endpoint. It runs on Linux, macOS, WSL2 and natively on Windows.

Is OpenClaw safe?

The OpenClaw security documentation is candid. The defaults are conservative: an unknown sender gets a pairing code, and groups go through an allowlist. At the same time it states three things you cannot overlook: container images have an exposed network bind by default, so you have to verify and secure it; OpenClaw is not a security boundary for mutually distrusting users who share one agent; and an agent with the message tool can by default send across conversations and channels. The README also says that tools run on the host in the main session unless you configure a sandbox.

My recommendation comes from these documents, not from my own test: run such an agent on a separate machine or in a virtual machine, with the least possible privileges and with approved senders only.

What does the community say about OpenClaw and local agents?

This is community opinion from r/LocalLLaMA. I did not open the threads themselves and rely on Google result previews, so this is mood, not data.

• On OpenClaw: some say the hype has faded, some doubt how organic its popularity was, there is talk of a "bloated harness" and that "skills are enough", and its security failures are cited as a case study. Others praise it as glue between local models, chat apps and home automation.
• Recurring topics in the previews (as of 20 October 2026): a Mac mini for local agents running 24/7, small MoE models that catch up with larger ones, and rising GPU prices. I do not give specific models or figures from the threads, because they cannot be verified.

What can transcribe speech to text: whisper.cpp?

whisper.cpp (GitHub, MIT) is a port of the OpenAI Whisper model to C/C++ for speech recognition. It runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Android, in WebAssembly and on a Raspberry Pi. For languages other than English you use the multilingual models, those without the .en suffix. I did not test the quality of Czech transcription for this article, so verify it on your own recordings before deploying it.

Where do I use open source myself?

• Godot (GitHub, MIT, over 118k stars): the game Noční linka runs on Godot 4.7.1, and third-party assets are CC0 only. I write about the game in the article AI and game development.
• Blender: the licence covers the source code (GPL version 2 or later, binaries version 3 or later), but what you create in Blender is yours, according to Blender's website. The 3D models of the game world are Python scripts (bpy) written by Claude Opus 5.5. Blender 4.1.1 ran windowless, rendered with Cycles on the CPU and without MCP. The audit and animation fixes were done by GPT-6 Astra. Selected videos on the website (for example on the web development and e-shop redesign pages) are rendered in Blender Cycles from Python scripts.
• Codex CLI (Apache-2.0): I use it daily next to Claude Code, which is not open source.

I describe the other projects in the overview from documentation, not from experience.

How do you choose an open-source AI project and what should you watch for?

1. A tool's licence is not the model's licence. MIT on Ollama says nothing about the model you run with it. Watch for the exceptions too: Open WebUI and its branding, copyleft in ComfyUI, the territorial limit on Hunyuan3D.
2. Who maintains the project and how fast it changes. A foundation and a long history are better than a single weekend repository. PhotoCraft is the opposite, an example of extremely fast development: its repository was created on 30 September 2026, by 20 October 2026 it had reached version 0.11.1 and, according to the ROADMAP from 13 October, it had 953 open issues.
3. Security. An agent with access to files, a shell and messages belongs on a separate machine or in a virtual machine, with the least privileges and an allowlist. This applies to OpenClaw and to Blender MCP alike.
4. Stars are not quality. On 20 October 2026 PhotoCraft had over 69 thousand stars on a repository created on 30 September 2026, and still calls itself early alpha.
5. An open-source tool is not free. You pay for a model through an API, a subscription (credits in ArtCraft studio) or hardware.
6. Information goes stale. For example, Gemini CLI changed for users without a paid plan on 18 June 2026. Check the current state in the repository before deploying.

Commercial alternatives and their prices are in the directory AI tools for entrepreneurs 2026.

If you want to work with AI safely in your company and decide what belongs in the cloud and what does not, I cover that in AI training, which includes safe use of AI in a company. Connecting tools to your processes is part of AI automation.

FAQ

Is there an open-source Adobe replacement with AI?

Yes, the ArtCraft project: a set of open-source Rust applications built with heavy help from AI agents by the ArtCraft team (according to Dieline, 8 October 2026, the software engineer Brandon Thomas is behind the project). PhotoCraft targets Photoshop, VectorCraft Illustrator, FilmCraft Premiere Pro and LightCraft Lightroom. No Craft app had reached version 1.0 by 20 October 2026, and on 22 October 2026 the website labels only PhotoCraft, PdfCraft and FigCraft as "early alpha". By the authors' own estimate PhotoCraft is about 45% ready for real work (status on 13 October 2026). Media such as XDA judge that it will not replace Adobe yet.

Is open-source AI free?

The software often is, running it is not. You pay for an open tool through a model via an API, a subscription (for ArtCraft studio these are optional credits for generation) or hardware for local operation.

What is the difference between open source and open weights?

Open source under the OSI means four freedoms and access to data information, code and parameters. With open weights the vendor publishes only the model parameters, often under its own licence, and does not have to publish the training data or code.

What is OpenClaw?

A self-hosted gateway (MIT licence) that connects chat apps such as WhatsApp, Telegram or Slack with an AI agent and works with a cloud or local model. It has the most stars among the AI agents in the overview, but its documentation itself points to security settings: run the agent separately and with the least privileges.

What should I start with for local AI?

The simplest is Ollama (macOS, Windows, Linux, Docker), possibly with the Open WebUI interface. Your hardware determines the model size. Details on running it in a company are in the article on local models.

Can I use open-source AI commercially?

It depends on the licence of both the tool and the model. MIT and Apache-2.0 are permissive, GPL-3.0 has obligations on distribution, and models have licences of their own: for example Hunyuan3D 2.1 does not apply in the EU. I am not a lawyer, so for commercial use check the licences or take advice.

Sources and links

• ArtCraft: official website, pricing and the GitHub organisation storytold
• PhotoCraft: README and ROADMAP.md, ArtCraft studio
• XDA Developers: ArtCraft review and Dieline: ArtCraft
• OSI: Open Source AI Definition 1.0
• Ollama and the Ollama model library, llama.cpp, Open WebUI and its licence, ComfyUI, Hunyuan3D 2.1
• OpenCode, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI
• OpenClaw, documentation and security, Hermes Agent, whisper.cpp
• Anthropic: donating MCP to the Agentic AI Foundation
• Blender MCP, Blender licence, Godot
• r/LocalLLaMA: community opinions, general link only