Design · Weekend build
Build your own Photoshop
You use four of its four thousand tools. Build the four. Photoshop charges $9.99–$22.99 per month — that’s $120–$276 a year — for something you can replace with focused software of your own. Here is the honest scope, the honest timeline, and the exact prompt to hand your coding agent.
Who this replacement is for
This build targets someone who opens a giant editor to crop, resize, and annotate screenshots. The goal: perform the handful of image edits you actually make, in the browser, without a subscription. If you need more than that, keep paying — the point of building it yourself is owning a tool shaped exactly like your workflow, not re-implementing a venture-funded roadmap.
How long it actually takes
One number would be a lie, so here are three. Each tier is a real, usable product — pick the one that matches how much of Photoshop you actually use.
| Estimate | What you get |
|---|---|
| 12 hours | crop, resize, rotate, annotate, export |
| 4 days | adjustments, filters, text overlays, batch export |
| 3 months+ | layers, masks, brushes, psd — a real editor — the part you should probably skip |
What a minimal Photoshop alternative needs
- open images by drag-and-drop with originals kept untouched
- crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate, and flip
- brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments with live preview
- arrows, boxes, highlights, and text annotations for screenshots
- export to common formats with quality control and a copy-to-clipboard action
Data model
local EditSession, Operation, and ExportPreset objects only
Integrations
browser Canvas and File System Access APIs
Capability context
Astro, Alpine, Browser API
The guardrail
Process everything client-side so images never leave the device, and keep an undo history so no edit is destructive until export.
Deliberate non-goals
Do not build layers, masks, brush engines, PSD compatibility, generative AI fills, or cloud storage.
The complete build prompt
Copy this into your coding agent of choice. It is scoped for a useful v1 — journeys, screens, business rules, data model, security, tests, and acceptance scenarios included. Pick your stack:
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pixelbench”, a deliberately focused alternative to Photoshop. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: someone who opens a giant editor to crop, resize, and annotate screenshots. Primary outcome: perform the handful of image edits you actually make, in the browser, without a subscription. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Photoshop. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The owner drops a screenshot onto the page, crops it to a preset ratio, draws an arrow and a highlight box, and copies the result to the clipboard. 2. The owner opens a photo, adjusts brightness and saturation with live preview, resizes it for the web, and exports it with a chosen quality. 3. The owner makes six edits, undoes two, compares against the untouched original, and exports without ever uploading the file anywhere. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Canvas: the image with zoom and pan, a compare-to-original toggle, undo and redo, and a visible edit-history strip. 2. Tool rail: crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate and flip, adjustments with sliders, and annotation tools with color and stroke options. 3. Annotation overlay: arrows, boxes, highlights, and text with drag handles, edit-in-place, and delete for each placed element. 4. Export: format choice, quality slider with estimated file size, filename field, and download plus copy-to-clipboard actions. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. open images by drag-and-drop with originals kept untouched 2. crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate, and flip 3. brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments with live preview 4. arrows, boxes, highlights, and text annotations for screenshots 5. export to common formats with quality control and a copy-to-clipboard action DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Perform every operation client-side on canvas data; no image byte ever leaves the browser. 2. Keep the loaded original immutable and apply edits as an ordered operation list so undo, redo, and compare are always exact. 3. Render annotations as editable objects until export, then rasterize them only into the exported copy. 4. Cap working-canvas dimensions with a clear downscale notice so huge images degrade gracefully instead of crashing the tab. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on local EditSession, Operation, and ExportPreset objects only. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Astro pages and ordinary HTML forms. Use HTMX for form submissions, partial navigation, and server-driven updates, then Alpine.js only for small local browser state. The core workflow must remain understandable if either enhancement layer fails. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with the AHA stack: Astro for routing, layouts, and server-rendered pages; HTMX for interactions that benefit from HTML fragment responses; and Alpine.js for small, local interface state. Prefer Cloudflare D1 for relational persistence, R2 for object storage, Workers for server endpoints and scheduled work, Durable Objects only for coordinated real-time state, and Workflows or Queues for durable background jobs—but only when the product requirements call for them. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, Alpine, Browser API as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with browser Canvas and File System Access APIs. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Process everything client-side so images never leave the device, and keep an undo history so no edit is destructive until export. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a crop followed by three annotations and two undos, the canvas shows exactly the crop plus one annotation and redo restores the next. 2. Given an export at eighty percent quality, the downloaded file matches the preview and the original file on disk is unchanged. 3. Given a network taken fully offline, every tool including export keeps working. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build layers, masks, brush engines, PSD compatibility, generative AI fills, or cloud storage.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pixelbench”, a deliberately focused alternative to Photoshop. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: someone who opens a giant editor to crop, resize, and annotate screenshots. Primary outcome: perform the handful of image edits you actually make, in the browser, without a subscription. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Photoshop. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The owner drops a screenshot onto the page, crops it to a preset ratio, draws an arrow and a highlight box, and copies the result to the clipboard. 2. The owner opens a photo, adjusts brightness and saturation with live preview, resizes it for the web, and exports it with a chosen quality. 3. The owner makes six edits, undoes two, compares against the untouched original, and exports without ever uploading the file anywhere. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Canvas: the image with zoom and pan, a compare-to-original toggle, undo and redo, and a visible edit-history strip. 2. Tool rail: crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate and flip, adjustments with sliders, and annotation tools with color and stroke options. 3. Annotation overlay: arrows, boxes, highlights, and text with drag handles, edit-in-place, and delete for each placed element. 4. Export: format choice, quality slider with estimated file size, filename field, and download plus copy-to-clipboard actions. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. open images by drag-and-drop with originals kept untouched 2. crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate, and flip 3. brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments with live preview 4. arrows, boxes, highlights, and text annotations for screenshots 5. export to common formats with quality control and a copy-to-clipboard action DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Perform every operation client-side on canvas data; no image byte ever leaves the browser. 2. Keep the loaded original immutable and apply edits as an ordered operation list so undo, redo, and compare are always exact. 3. Render annotations as editable objects until export, then rasterize them only into the exported copy. 4. Cap working-canvas dimensions with a clear downscale notice so huge images degrade gracefully instead of crashing the tab. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on local EditSession, Operation, and ExportPreset objects only. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Render with React Server Components by default. Use Server Actions for authenticated form mutations and add Client Components only for interactions that genuinely require browser state, browser APIs, drag-and-drop, or live updates. The core workflow must remain understandable before client-side JavaScript finishes loading. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Next.js, the App Router, and TypeScript. Use Server Components by default, Server Actions for authenticated mutations, and Route Handlers for public APIs, OAuth callbacks, webhooks, feeds, uploads, and downloads. Use PostgreSQL through Drizzle ORM with versioned migrations and an isolated test database. Access S3-compatible object storage through a server-only adapter, and run slow or retryable work in a real job or workflow system instead of the request lifecycle. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, Alpine, Browser API as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with browser Canvas and File System Access APIs. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Process everything client-side so images never leave the device, and keep an undo history so no edit is destructive until export. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a crop followed by three annotations and two undos, the canvas shows exactly the crop plus one annotation and redo restores the next. 2. Given an export at eighty percent quality, the downloaded file matches the preview and the original file on disk is unchanged. 3. Given a network taken fully offline, every tool including export keeps working. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build layers, masks, brush engines, PSD compatibility, generative AI fills, or cloud storage.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pixelbench”, a deliberately focused alternative to Photoshop. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: someone who opens a giant editor to crop, resize, and annotate screenshots. Primary outcome: perform the handful of image edits you actually make, in the browser, without a subscription. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Photoshop. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The owner drops a screenshot onto the page, crops it to a preset ratio, draws an arrow and a highlight box, and copies the result to the clipboard. 2. The owner opens a photo, adjusts brightness and saturation with live preview, resizes it for the web, and exports it with a chosen quality. 3. The owner makes six edits, undoes two, compares against the untouched original, and exports without ever uploading the file anywhere. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Canvas: the image with zoom and pan, a compare-to-original toggle, undo and redo, and a visible edit-history strip. 2. Tool rail: crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate and flip, adjustments with sliders, and annotation tools with color and stroke options. 3. Annotation overlay: arrows, boxes, highlights, and text with drag handles, edit-in-place, and delete for each placed element. 4. Export: format choice, quality slider with estimated file size, filename field, and download plus copy-to-clipboard actions. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. open images by drag-and-drop with originals kept untouched 2. crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate, and flip 3. brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments with live preview 4. arrows, boxes, highlights, and text annotations for screenshots 5. export to common formats with quality control and a copy-to-clipboard action DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Perform every operation client-side on canvas data; no image byte ever leaves the browser. 2. Keep the loaded original immutable and apply edits as an ordered operation list so undo, redo, and compare are always exact. 3. Render annotations as editable objects until export, then rasterize them only into the exported copy. 4. Cap working-canvas dimensions with a clear downscale notice so huge images degrade gracefully instead of crashing the tab. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on local EditSession, Operation, and ExportPreset objects only. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Blade views and ordinary forms. Use Livewire for focused server-driven interactions and Alpine.js only for small local interface state. The core workflow must remain understandable without relying on a client-side application shell. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Laravel, PHP, Blade, Livewire, and Alpine.js. Use controllers and Blade forms for durable navigation, Livewire for focused interactions, Form Requests for validation, Policies and Gates for authorization, and small application actions or services for domain transitions. Use Eloquent with migrations, database constraints, and transactions; Laravel Storage for private S3-compatible files; queued Jobs for retryable work; the Scheduler for recurring work; and Notifications or Mail for email. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, Alpine, Browser API as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with browser Canvas and File System Access APIs. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Process everything client-side so images never leave the device, and keep an undo history so no edit is destructive until export. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a crop followed by three annotations and two undos, the canvas shows exactly the crop plus one annotation and redo restores the next. 2. Given an export at eighty percent quality, the downloaded file matches the preview and the original file on disk is unchanged. 3. Given a network taken fully offline, every tool including export keeps working. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build layers, masks, brush engines, PSD compatibility, generative AI fills, or cloud storage.
You are building a production-ready software product named “Pixelbench”, a deliberately focused alternative to Photoshop. Build a complete, usable vertical slice—not a landing page, static mockup, or disconnected collection of components. WORKING AGREEMENT Before writing implementation code, produce a short technical plan that names the routes or pages, server actions or endpoints, data tables, important state transitions, authorization boundaries, background jobs, and external adapters. Resolve contradictions in favor of the narrow audience and non-goals below. Prefer a small, legible architecture over speculative abstraction, but do not omit persistence, validation, error handling, or tests. PRODUCT BRIEF Primary user: someone who opens a giant editor to crop, resize, and annotate screenshots. Primary outcome: perform the handful of image edits you actually make, in the browser, without a subscription. Product principle: optimize the exact workflow below instead of copying the full breadth of Photoshop. A first-time user should understand what to do from the interface itself, without a tour or documentation. END-TO-END USER JOURNEYS Implement all of these flows through the real interface and persistent data layer: 1. The owner drops a screenshot onto the page, crops it to a preset ratio, draws an arrow and a highlight box, and copies the result to the clipboard. 2. The owner opens a photo, adjusts brightness and saturation with live preview, resizes it for the web, and exports it with a chosen quality. 3. The owner makes six edits, undoes two, compares against the untouched original, and exports without ever uploading the file anywhere. SCREENS AND INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE Build these as coherent responsive views. Each screen must specify its primary action, secondary actions, visible status, validation feedback, empty state, loading or pending state, success confirmation, and recoverable failure state. 1. Canvas: the image with zoom and pan, a compare-to-original toggle, undo and redo, and a visible edit-history strip. 2. Tool rail: crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate and flip, adjustments with sliders, and annotation tools with color and stroke options. 3. Annotation overlay: arrows, boxes, highlights, and text with drag handles, edit-in-place, and delete for each placed element. 4. Export: format choice, quality slider with estimated file size, filename field, and download plus copy-to-clipboard actions. CORE CAPABILITIES 1. open images by drag-and-drop with originals kept untouched 2. crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate, and flip 3. brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments with live preview 4. arrows, boxes, highlights, and text annotations for screenshots 5. export to common formats with quality control and a copy-to-clipboard action DETAILED BEHAVIOR AND BUSINESS RULES Treat these as server-enforced product requirements, not interface suggestions: 1. Perform every operation client-side on canvas data; no image byte ever leaves the browser. 2. Keep the loaded original immutable and apply edits as an ordered operation list so undo, redo, and compare are always exact. 3. Render annotations as editable objects until export, then rasterize them only into the exported copy. 4. Cap working-canvas dimensions with a clear downscale notice so huge images degrade gracefully instead of crashing the tab. DATA MODEL AND LIFECYCLE Design a small relational schema centered on local EditSession, Operation, and ExportPreset objects only. Before implementing it, document: 1. Each table’s purpose, primary key, ownership or tenant boundary, timestamps, status fields, and important attributes. 2. Foreign keys, uniqueness constraints, check constraints, indexes needed by the named screens, and transaction boundaries for multi-record changes. 3. The allowed lifecycle or state transitions, who may trigger each transition, which transitions are terminal or reversible, and what audit history must remain immutable. 4. Archive, retention, and deletion behavior, including what happens to dependent records and external files. 5. Idempotency strategy for submissions, jobs, imports, notifications, webhooks, or retries where applicable. Use migrations rather than ad-hoc schema creation. Store time instants consistently and retain named timezone context whenever local schedules or dates matter. Never rely on a counter, disabled button, or client-side check to preserve a business invariant. USERS, AUTHENTICATION, AND PERMISSIONS Implement only the roles required by the stated audience. Make the ownership and visibility model explicit before coding. Enforce authorization in every server-side query and mutation, including search, exports, attachments, live updates, and guessed URLs—not merely by hiding controls. Use secure session defaults, protect state-changing requests, and provide an understandable signed-out, expired-session, and forbidden state. Seed distinct users when multiple roles are required so permissions can be demonstrated and tested. INTERACTION AND VISUAL DIRECTION The product should feel fast, calm, focused, and credible rather than like a generic admin template. Use a clear visual hierarchy, restrained color, readable typography, generous hit targets, and consistent placement for primary actions. Start with server-rendered HTML and progressively enhance only the interactions that benefit from it. The core workflow must remain understandable if enhancement fails. Start with server-rendered Rails views and ordinary forms. Use Turbo for navigation, submissions, and server-driven updates, then Stimulus only for small browser-side behavior. Do not turn the product into a client-side SPA, and keep the core workflow usable when enhancement fails. Design mobile layouts intentionally instead of simply stacking desktop panels. Support keyboard navigation, visible focus, semantic landmarks, explicit labels, useful page titles, reduced-motion preferences, and screen-reader announcements for asynchronous results. Never use color alone to communicate state. Destructive actions require clear scope and confirmation; safe repeated actions should be idempotent. TECHNICAL DIRECTION Build this version with Ruby on Rails and Hotwire: Turbo for navigation, form submissions, and server-driven updates, and Stimulus for small browser-side behavior. Use RESTful controllers with strong parameters and explicit authorization, with domain transitions in testable models or small application services. Use Active Record migrations plus database-level constraints and transactions; Active Storage with an S3-compatible service for private files; Active Job with a durable queue backend for retryable work; Action Mailer for email; and Action Cable only when live updates are required. Keep domain rules in testable server-side modules instead of route handlers or UI components. Separate persistence, external providers, and background work behind small interfaces without building a framework. Prefer ordinary HTML forms and URLs for durable navigation; use optimistic interaction only when failure can be reconciled clearly. The product brief currently identifies Astro, Alpine, Browser API as capability context. Preserve any required native, browser-only, edge, storage, real-time, or background-processing capability through a narrow adapter appropriate to the selected framework. If the core workflow genuinely requires native or browser APIs, keep that runtime as the primary execution surface rather than simulating inaccessible capabilities or inventing an unnecessary web surface. Integrate with browser Canvas and File System Access APIs. For every integration: - List required environment variables in an .env.example without real secrets. - Add a small adapter with timeouts, normalized errors, and a deterministic local fake or development path. - Verify inbound signatures and deduplicate provider events where supported. - Keep credentials server-side, encrypt long-lived provider tokens at rest, and redact secrets and sensitive payloads from logs. - Define retry, backoff, and idempotency behavior for any side effect that can be repeated. SECURITY AND PRIVACY Process everything client-side so images never leave the device, and keep an undo history so no edit is destructive until export. Validate, normalize, and length-limit all untrusted input on the server. Escape rendered content by default, sanitize any intentionally accepted markup, rate-limit public or abuse-prone actions, and use private object storage plus short-lived authorized URLs for sensitive files. Collect the minimum personal data necessary for the named workflow. Document retention and deletion behavior. Add specific protections for the riskier surfaces in this app, such as uploads, redirects, outbound requests, email delivery, OAuth, webhooks, CSV import or export, and real-time connections. ACCEPTANCE SCENARIOS Automate these app-specific scenarios at the most appropriate level: 1. Given a crop followed by three annotations and two undos, the canvas shows exactly the crop plus one annotation and redo restores the next. 2. Given an export at eighty percent quality, the downloaded file matches the preview and the original file on disk is unchanged. 3. Given a network taken fully offline, every tool including export keeps working. TESTING Add focused unit tests for state transitions, authorization predicates, normalization, date or money calculations, and other risky domain rules. Add integration tests for persistence constraints and each external adapter’s success, timeout, retry, and rejection paths. Add at least one browser-level test for every end-to-end journey above, including one small-screen viewport. Tests must use isolated data and run through a documented single command. OPERATIONS AND FAILURE RECOVERY Add structured server logs with request, job, or event correlation IDs but no secrets or unnecessarily sensitive data. Make failures actionable in both the interface and logs. Background work must expose pending, succeeded, failed, and retrying states where relevant; do not silently swallow errors. Include safe database migration and rollback guidance, seed data, backup and restore notes, external-data cleanup behavior, and a basic health or diagnostic path appropriate to the stack. DELIVERABLES Ship the working application, migrations, representative seed data, tests, .env.example, and a concise README. The README must cover prerequisites, local setup, environment variables, migrations, seed and test commands, deployment, integration setup, backup and restore, security decisions, and known limitations. Seed data should exercise the happy path plus at least one empty, failed, overdue, expired, archived, or permission-restricted state relevant to the product. DEFINITION OF DONE The app is complete when a fresh developer can follow the README, create and migrate the database, run the app, sign in as each relevant role, complete every named journey using real persisted data, refresh without losing state, recover from common failures, and use the core interface on phone and desktop. All acceptance scenarios pass, permission boundaries are covered by tests, and no core screen is left as a placeholder. NON-GOALS Do not build layers, masks, brush engines, PSD compatibility, generative AI fills, or cloud storage.
Frequently asked questions
How long does it take to build your own Photoshop?
A basic version — crop, resize, rotate, annotate, export — takes about 12 hours. Roughly 4 days gets you a solid v1 with adjustments, filters, text overlays, batch export. Matching everything Photoshop really does (layers, masks, brushes, psd — a real editor) is closer to 3 months+, which is exactly why you should scope down instead.
How much does Photoshop cost if I keep subscribing?
Photoshop runs $9.99–$22.99 per month on public paid plans, which is $120–$276 per year. A focused self-built replacement costs your build time plus close-to-zero hosting.
What stack should I use to build a Photoshop alternative?
The build prompt on this page ships in four flavors: the AHA stack (Astro, HTMX, Alpine.js), Next.js, Laravel, and Ruby on Rails. The capability context for this product is Astro, Alpine, Browser API. Pick the stack you already know — the scope matters more than the framework.
What features does a minimal Photoshop replacement need?
A useful v1 needs: open images by drag-and-drop with originals kept untouched; crop with aspect presets, resize, rotate, and flip; brightness, contrast, and saturation adjustments with live preview; arrows, boxes, highlights, and text annotations for screenshots; export to common formats with quality control and a copy-to-clipboard action. Everything else is scope creep until you personally miss it.
What should I deliberately not build?
Do not build layers, masks, brush engines, PSD compatibility, generative AI fills, or cloud storage.