Short version: I typed three words, "recreate this website", and Craft Anything rebuilt Hacker News to 91% of the original in 29 minutes and 17.6 million tokens. A copy of 2048 scored only 59% but actually played. Then Deep mode answered questions about the wrong app. It's free and open source, and it's also a very early alpha.
▶ Full video: https://youtu.be/t-GX0THhZfo
What is Craft Anything?
It's a desktop app from storytold, the team behind ArtCraft. You point it at a website, app or game, and say what you want. It then runs a loop you mostly just watch:
- Study: opens the original in a private browser and photographs every page at phone, tablet and desktop sizes.
- Build: Claude Code builds your version on your own Mac, with your own account.
- Check: compares the copy with the original and fixes what it finds.
- Ready: you get a project you can run.
It's free, open source (Apache 2.0), written in Rust, and has about 320 tools under the hood. The Mac download is 127 MB, signed and notarized by Apple.
The important default is clean-room mode. It never reads the original's code, only what a normal visitor can see. It copies the design, not the content or the brand.
Test 1: Hacker News
I typed the address, wrote "recreate this website" and pressed start.
- First version: 72% like the original
- After 16 self-checks: 91%
- Time: 29 minutes 34 seconds
- Tokens: 17.6 million (about $7.49 at API prices; my Claude plan covered it)
Next to the real site, the layout, orange bar and spacing all match. Look closer, though, and it's called Ticker News, the logo is a T, and every story is made up. That's clean-room mode doing its job. It even listed the things it wouldn't decide for me, such as whether it may use the real name and logo.
Test 2: 2048 from the command line
This time I skipped the GUI: one command, one sentence. Halfway through, my Claude plan hit its five-hour limit and the build stopped. The next morning, one resume command picked up exactly where it left off.
- Result: a game called "Fuse": same 4×4 board, new name, colors and font
- Score: 59%, because clean-room mode won't copy the art
- Time: 17 minutes, 2.8 million tokens
The score undersells it. The tiles slide, the numbers merge, and I made a 64. A low similarity number didn't mean a broken copy. It partly meant the tool refused to copy the art.
Test 3: Deep mode (what broke)
Deep mode takes a program apart and explains how it works. It even offered to download Ghidra, which I declined. I pointed it at PhotoCraft, an open-source app I'm allowed to inspect.
- It called the app a zero-byte folder.
- I asked how the app is put together, and it answered about Hacker News.
- It reported 368 findings. After a restart it showed 1. It had been mixing in my first project.
Expect bugs like this. The app labels itself early alpha, and that's accurate.
What it's good for
- Learning how a site is built
- Prototyping your own version of an idea
- Bringing back old software you own that nobody supports
It also has guardrails: it asks before running commands, and it refuses to bypass logins, DRM or anti-cheat.
Verdict
If you need a real product today, no. It's slow, it burns tokens, and some features break. As a learning tool, though, it's remarkable. Watching an agent measure colors and spacing, score itself, and fix the gaps teaches you a lot about what a page is actually made of.
Plan for the token bill. One website took 17.6 million tokens and one build ran into my five-hour limit, so this isn't something to leave running casually on a small plan.
What would you clone first to learn how it works?
Links
- Craft Anything on GitHub: https://github.com/storytold/craft-anything
- Full video: https://youtu.be/t-GX0THhZfo
AI-assisted disclosure: I used an AI assistant to help structure this write-up. The tests, timings and token counts are my own (Mac mini M4, Craft Anything 0.3.0, November 2026). Not sponsored by or affiliated with storytold, Hacker News or Anthropic.
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