- Published on
An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word in pure Rust
- Authors
- Name
- DeepHorus
WordCraft, an open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Microsoft Word written in pure Rust, has been released by the ArtCraft team, offering a fast, native word processor that preserves the ribbon-based workflow familiar to Word users. The project is published under a dual MIT OR Apache-2.0 licence and is available now via GitHub, with builds for macOS, Windows, Linux, BSD and the browser. According to its authors, it was built from public specifications and observation, with every bundled asset either original or openly licensed.
The application targets document design and long-form writing, reproducing Word conventions in detail: ribbon tabs and groups, a live Styles gallery, rulers, a Navigation pane, tables, track changes, references and mail merge. Keyboard behaviour is deliberately faithful ā Enter continues a list, Tab demotes it, Ctrl or Command plus B bolds the word under the caret, F4 repeats the last action, F7 checks spelling and F8 extends the selection. The Open Studio Handbook ships as a built-in sample document.
File compatibility is broad. WordCraft opens and saves .docx (OOXML) and also handles .odt, .rtf, .html, .md, .tex and .txt, while opening legacy Word 97-2003 .doc files. PDF export produces real, selectable text with links and bookmarks, and the bundled command-line tool converts documents between formats, extracts plain text or dumps structure as JSON.
Performance is a stated priority. Paragraph layout is cached, so typing inside a 188-page document triggers a re-layout in roughly 1.4 milliseconds, with pages rendered on demand. One Rust codebase serves every platform, running on native egui rather than Electron or Tauri, and the same code compiles to WebAssembly for browser use.
Automation is treated as a first-class feature. Every action is a command with an identifier, and the same 422 commands drive the ribbon, shortcuts, command search, a command-line tool, a JSON control channel and an MCP server. Tools exposed to agents include list_commands, execute, batch, type_text, select_text, inspect_document, render_page and save_document, alongside screenshot, click and key when a live application is connected. Macros can record and replay any command sequence.
Privacy and verifiability are emphasised. Spelling, grammar and remaining functionality operate offline. Every published screenshot is rendered offscreen by WordCraft's own UI test harness, and the project publishes a parity assessment, a generated feature checklist and an area-by-area ROADMAP.md that documents what is and is not yet complete.
Developers can clone the repository, run the desktop application with a sample document, or launch the web build locally through Trunk. Logs are written next to user preferences on Linux, macOS and Windows, giving contributors a straightforward path to testing and reporting issues.
