WordCraft

Writing and document design; an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word, rebuilt in pure Rust.

A fast, open-source word processor with the Word workflow you already know: the ribbon, styles, tables, track changes, references and mail merge. It reads and writes .docx, runs natively on macOS, Windows, Linux and BSD, and in the browser via WebAssembly.
By the ArtCraft team.

WordCraft on getartcraft.com · ArtCraft · All Crafting Apps

_{The Open Studio Handbook, WordCraft's built-in sample: the ribbon, live Styles gallery, rulers and the Navigation pane.}

[!NOTE] ArtCraft is a community of artists from all walks of life. Painters, photographers, filmmakers, illustrators, designers, animators, hobbyists, and people who picked up a pencil last week. If you make things, you're one of us. Come say hi on Discord.

A tour · Why WordCraft · What works today · Quick start · For agents · Architecture · Roadmap · Downloads · The Crafting Apps · License and credits

A tour

Every screenshot below is WordCraft itself, rendered offscreen by its own UI test harness (cargo run -p wordcraft-ui-egui --example ui_shot).

Why WordCraft

• Familiar. Word's ribbon tabs, groups, shortcuts and behaviour: Enter continues a list, Tab demotes it, Ctrl/⌘+B bolds the word under the caret, the Styles gallery previews styles live, F4 repeats, F7 checks spelling, F8 extends the selection.
• Your files. Opens and saves .docx (OOXML), and also .odt, .rtf, .html, .md, .txt; exports PDF with real, selectable text, links and bookmarks.
• Fast. Paragraph layout is cached, so typing in a 188-page document re-lays it out in about 1.4 ms; pages render on demand.
• Everywhere. One Rust codebase for macOS, Windows, Linux, BSD and the web. No Electron, no Tauri: native egui on the GPU.
• Built for agents. Every action is a command with an id. The same 389 commands drive the ribbon, keyboard shortcuts, the command search, a command-line tool, a JSON control channel and an MCP server.
• Private. Spelling, grammar and everything else work offline.
• Open. MIT OR Apache-2.0. Clean-room: built from public specifications and observation, with every asset original or openly licensed.

What works today

The honest picture, area by area, is in ROADMAP.md and the generated feature parity report.

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/storytold/wordcraft
cd wordcraft
cargo run --release -p wordcraft -- --sample        # the desktop app with the sample document
cargo run --release -p wordcraft -- report.docx     # open a document

Command line:

wordcraft-cli convert report.docx report.pdf        # docx, pdf, odt, rtf, html, md, txt, png
wordcraft-cli text report.docx                      # plain text
wordcraft-cli inspect report.docx                   # structure as JSON
wordcraft-cli run --template sample \
  --cmd 'select.text={"text":"Membership"}' --cmd format.bold --save out.docx

Web: cd apps/wordcraft-web && trunk serve, then open http://127.0.0.1:8771/?sample.

For agents: CLI and MCP

WordCraft was designed to be driven by people and by AI agents.

claude mcp add wordcraft -- wordcraft-cli mcp                  # headless documents
wordcraft --control 7981 &                                     # or drive the running app…
claude mcp add wordcraft-app -- wordcraft-cli mcp --connect 127.0.0.1:7981

Tools include list_commands, execute, batch, type_text, select_text, inspect_document, render_page, save_document, and, with a running app, screenshot, click and key. Agents can check their work through inspect_document without screenshots. See docs/mcp.md and the control protocol. Macros record any sequence of commands and play it back (tools.recordMacro, tools.macros).

Logs

The desktop app writes its log records to standard error and to logs/wordcraft.log next to its preferences: on Linux $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/wordcraft/logs/ (by default ~/.config/wordcraft/logs/), on macOS ~/Library/Application Support/WordCraft/logs/, on Windows %APPDATA%\WordCraft\logs\. A start from a desktop menu or the Dock has no terminal, so this file is what to attach to a bug report: unreadable parts of a .docx, pictures or fonts a PDF export had to leave out and panics the command guard recovered from land there. Each launch moves the previous log to wordcraft.1.log (and that one to wordcraft.2.log), so the log of a run that crashed survives the next start; a log stops growing at 16 MiB. --version writes no file, and runs with WORDCRAFT_NO_PREFS (agents' test runs) log to standard error only. Document text is never logged; a panic message leaves out the text it quotes.

By default WordCraft's own crates log at info and everything else at warn. RUST_LOG replaces that with env_logger-style directives, for example RUST_LOG=debug, RUST_LOG=warn,wordcraft_docx=trace or RUST_LOG=info,wgpu_core=warn; a directive ending in * covers every target starting with it (wordcraft*=debug). The logger is apps/wordcraft/src/logging.rs.

Architecture

cargo xtask ci runs formatting, clippy, ~250 tests, the asset-attribution check, the layering check and the wasm build. Contributor and agent instructions: AGENTS.md.

Roadmap

WordCraft covers 87% of Word's ribbon features with commands today; counting depth and fidelity, we estimate about 62% of real feature parity. An alpha for everyday writing is close: the remaining work is mostly testing against real-world .docx files, native printing and the first signed builds. Charts, SmartArt, the equation editor and the Draw tab come after. Details and estimates: ROADMAP.md.

Downloads

Download WordCraft from GitHub: the latest release has every build listed below, and all releases has earlier versions and their notes. <ver> in the file names is the version number, and SHA256SUMS.txt lists a checksum for every file.

Windows

Installers and executables are code-signed.

If the app doesn't open on Windows: the desktop app initializes only DirectX 12 by default. Letting wgpu also create an OpenGL instance can crash some graphics drivers (AMD's atio6axx.dll) before the window appears, so the app would flash in Task Manager and quit. WGPU_BACKEND overrides the default for troubleshooting (for example dx12 or vulkan). In PowerShell, from the folder containing the executable:

$env:WGPU_BACKEND = "vulkan"
& .\wordcraft.exe
Remove-Item Env:WGPU_BACKEND                     # restore the default for later launches

An explicit gl override can bring the driver crash back on affected systems. The macOS, Linux and web backend defaults are unchanged.

macOS

Linux

FreeBSD

Web (WebAssembly)

The Crafting Apps

WordCraft is one of the Crafting Apps: free, open-source creative tools from the ArtCraft team, each written from scratch in Rust and each able to stand on its own.

And ArtCraft itself, our AI image and video studio for artists who want real control.

Come make things with us

Our Discord is where artists of every kind hang out: people who paint, shoot, draw, cut film, set type, and people still figuring out what they like to make. Share what you're working on, ask for help, tell us what's broken, or tell us what you wish these tools could do. Whatever your medium and however long you've been at it, you're welcome here.

discord.gg/artcraft · getartcraft.com · The Crafting Apps · WordCraft

License and credits

WordCraft is dual-licensed under MIT or Apache-2.0, at your option. Copyright (c) 2026 ArtCraft Team and the WordCraft contributors. Required notices are in NOTICE.

Bundled fonts, icons, images and other assets keep their own open licenses; each one is listed with its author, source and license in ATTRIBUTION.md.

The spelling dictionary and hyphenation come from Grady Ward's public-domain Moby Hyphenator II word list. The sample documents and templates are original text written for WordCraft.

The ArtCraft name, wordmark and logos in docs/brand/ are trademarks of the ArtCraft Team and are not covered by this license. They may be used only unmodified, and only as part of this repository and WordCraft, under docs/brand/LICENSE-brand.txt. Forks and modified versions must remove them.

_{Microsoft and Microsoft Word are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. Adobe, Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, Lightroom, Acrobat, After Effects and InDesign are trademarks or registered trademarks of Adobe Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. WordCraft is an independent, open-source project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by Microsoft Corporation or Adobe Inc.; these names are used only to describe the workflows it is compatible with.}

_{Made by the ArtCraft team and community.}