CADCraft: AutoCAD-style drafting, free and open

What it is

CADCraft is a free drafting program, the kind of tool used for precise floor plans and technical drawings. The ArtCraft team built it as a "clean-room" rebuild of AutoCAD. It works the same way, with layers, measurements, hatched areas, reusable blocks and snapping to exact points, but it was written from scratch. It runs on Mac, Windows, Linux and FreeBSD, and even right inside a web browser. It's one of twelve free "Crafting Apps" the team is making.

Why it caught my eye

Two things. First, it's open source, so anyone can use it, look inside it or build on it. Second, it speaks MCP, which means an AI agent like Claude can be handed the pencil. Picture describing the layout for a new dining room and watching an assistant draw it, layer by layer. It also opens DXF drawings, a common format for sharing plans.

People on GitHub clearly noticed. It picked up thousands of stars and forks very quickly.

The honest part

It's very early. The repo says "early development", and a third-party guide says the roadmap calls it pre-alpha. Precision drawing, blocks, plotting and saving DWG files without losing anything are still not ready. Don't move your studio onto it tomorrow.

Words worth knowing

• CAD: computer-aided design. Software for exact drawings such as plans, parts and layouts.
• Clean-room: rebuilding how a product behaves without copying its original code.
• MCP: a shared plug that lets AI agents operate other software.
• Open source: the recipe is public. It's free to use, read and adapt.

Worth thinking about

If drawings touch your business at all, whether that's a renovation, a shop fit-out or a new kitchen, bookmark github.com/storytold/cadcraft and check back in a few months. The interesting question isn't whether it replaces your current tool today. It's what changes when your AI assistant can sketch the plan alongside you.