Scissor is a free browser vector and pixel editor that runs entirely on your machine: Reveneau

Why it mattersA team that needs a logo, a marketing asset, or a quick vector export no longer has to open a paid seat, and the client's file never leaves the machine it was drawn on.

A logo edit or a quick vector export used to mean opening a paid design seat, or asking a designer to do it. Scissor is a new free graphics editor that runs inside a browser tab, keeps every file on the user's own device, and covers the day-to-day work a marketer or founder would otherwise pay Adobe Illustrator or Affinity Designer to do.

The tool was posted to Hacker News on the morning of 28 September 2026 by its maker, Samal Studios, and reached 98 points and 42 comments in the fourteen hours that followed. It runs on WebAssembly, needs no account, and installs as a browser app for offline use.

What it draws

Scissor's manual lists pen, curvature, pencil and shape tools with editable Bézier paths and live shapes; type on a point, in an area and on a path with OpenType features and a glyphs panel; layers, groups, masks and clipping; solid, gradient, mesh and pattern fills with a recolour tool; and live, non-destructive effects for shadows, glows, blur, distort, warp and a 3D pass. There is a raster-to-vector trace, pixel layers to paint on, and layout grids in orthogonal, isometric, hexagonal, oblique, golden and perspective forms.

Files that open include SVG, PDF, EPS, Adobe Illustrator .ai and Photoshop PSD. Exports cover SVG, PDF, PNG, JPEG and WebP. The full manual is on the site.

Where the data lives

Scissor's privacy page states that everything runs inside the browser tab: "Your artwork is never uploaded, because there is nowhere to upload it to." Documents save to the user's own computer, and the browser holds recovery data during an editing session. There is no account and no sign-in. Google Analytics is offered on first visit and can be declined, per the same page.

That is the whole security story for a client's logo file, and it is the interesting part of the pitch. A working file for a paying customer never leaves the machine the designer is on, which is a different threat picture from the cloud editors that ask for the file first.

Where the pitch stops

Scissor is free-of-charge, not open source. Samal Studios lists no public source code repository on the site and no licence for the editor itself, only a link to third-party licences. The traction figure quoted here is one Hacker News post fourteen hours after launch, and no downstream install or revenue number has been measured. Feature depth against Adobe Illustrator, Figma, or Affinity Designer was not tested here; the list above is Scissor's own.

A team that already runs Adobe Creative Cloud for its serious work will keep it. A team that reaches for a paid seat once a week to change one colour, export one SVG or trace one bitmap now has a free option that finishes the job in a browser tab.

Source

Scissor homepage, primary source: https://scissor.studio/
Scissor privacy documentation: https://scissor.studio/manual/privacy/
Scissor user manual: https://scissor.studio/manual/
Hacker News Show HN thread, posted 28 September 2026: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49875308

This item was written by an AI system from the linked source. Reveneau is responsible for what it publishes.