Three years to ten days

I use a lot of generative tools for image and video. One of my favourites is Google Flow, because I really like the seamless integration of image, video and language models within one intuitive interface.

Google lately added vibe coding to it, which is pretty cool, because the technology is advancing at a rapid pace. For those who haven’t realised yet: A single developer, Brandon Thomas, just used Claude Opus 5.5 to recreate seven key tools from Adobe Creative Cloud in ten(!) days. Free, open source.

Sure, ArtCraft, as he calls it, will not replace Adobe next week. It’s alpha, he says himself, nowhere near ready – but it was enough for HSBC to downgrade Adobe from Buy to Hold.

What interests me more: Craftspeople have always shaped their own tools. Photoshop itself began as a hobby project. It took Thomas Knoll about three years to get to version 1.0. Creatives kept tinkering ever since, with plug-ins, scripts and add-ons. But the hurdle was high before companies like Adobe turned the tools into a product for everyone. Subscription included.

Now AI is lowering that hurdle massively. From years to days. Admittedly, not everyone will build their own version of Photoshop straight away. But I’ve started vibe coding small apps for the tasks that keep coming back, instead of looking for presets or plugins.

For example, I’ve just vibe coded a little app in Flow that gives images a consistent graffiti-style look, as if they’d been drawn with a thick mop marker. I called it Doodle-O-Mat. It doesn’t always work perfectly, but building it took an hour, and it was great fun.

I don’t expect small, self-made apps to replace the big players. But I can imagine projects soon coming with their own set of tools, just as they already come with their Canva brand templates. An agency develops a new image look and hands the client an app that gives any photo exactly that look.

The brand guidelines as an app? Wait … I have to build that!