Quoting Rick Brewster

Paint.NET author Rick Brewster explains that because Direct2D on WINE has been an insurmountable hurdle that could not be disabled, the software now features a custom, from-scratch, clean-room reverse-engineered rewrite of Direct2D specifically for WINE users, activated by using the /wine command line argument. This new compatibility layer is contained within a file named PaintDotNet.Windows.Direct2D1.Managed.dll.

The code for this rewrite was generated by Claude, an artificial intelligence assistant, resulting in roughly 180,000 lines of code. Brewster describes the development process as vibe coded, meaning the massive volume of code was not thoroughly reviewed line-by-line due to its sheer scale, which is significant given that the rest of Paint.NET consists of about 700,000 lines accumulated over twenty years of development.

While Brewster notes that Claude performed clever and tireless reverse engineering to figure out formulas for Direct2D's built-in effects library, human oversight was still required. Brewster had to babysit the AI to correct resource management oversights, such as missing reference counting equivalents, and address poor architectural decisions during the process.