Why not just use Claude?
Claude is excellent. But a brilliant new hire still doesn't know your company.
The short answer
Claude and ChatGPT are great all-round helpers. Claude Code is a great helper for developers. Iris is different: it learns how your company's applications work, and anyone at your company can ask it for help.
Side by side
YesPartlyNo
| Question | Iris | Regular AI chatbot (like ChatGPT) | Claude Code |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who can use it? | Yes. Everyone at your company, and sharing answers is easy. | Partly. One person at a time, and sharing is hard. | Partly. Mostly developers, and sharing is hard. |
| Does it explain with pictures? | Yes. It draws diagrams for you. | Partly. Mostly words. | Partly. Mostly words. |
| Does it understand how your business connects? | Yes. It maps how everything connects. | No. It looks for similar words. | No. It scans your code. |
| Does it learn from code, documents and experts? | Yes. All three, together. | Partly. Mostly documents. | Partly. Mostly code. |
| Can you check the answers? | Yes. It shows where answers come from. | No. Not easily, and it can make things up. | Partly. It points to code, rarely to other documents. |
| Does it know your industry? | Yes. It has skills such as risk analysis. | No. It's made for general use. | No. It's made for writing software. |
| Can you control what it knows? | Yes. You can also add your own add-ons. | No. It only knows the current chat. | Yes. It uses your code and developer tools. |
| Does it know all your applications? | Yes. It connects them. | No. One question or document at a time. | Partly. One code project at a time. |
| Does it remember what experts teach it? | Yes. The knowledge stays. | No. Not for your whole company. | Partly. Only notes left in the code. |
| Can your people review its work? | Yes. Review steps are built in. | Partly. You copy and check it yourself. | Yes. Developers review code changes by hand. |
| Does it get better over time? | Yes. It learns from feedback. | Partly. You can only give a thumbs up or down. | No. Only if you reword your request. |
| Is it built for company security? | Yes. It has company-wide controls. | Partly. It has standard safeguards. | Partly. It runs on the developer's computer. |
| Can you undo changes? | Yes. Full history, backup and restore. | Partly. You only get chat history. | Yes. You get history for code. |
| Does it know rules and regulations? | Yes. It connects to legal and regulatory databases. | No. Only what it learned in general. | No. Only what's in your project. |
| Can you start quickly? | Yes. It's set up for your need. | No. You must build a lot around it. | Partly. It must fit how developers work. |
Based on how these tools typically work out of the box. They change often.
When Claude alone is enough
For everyday writing and research, or a developer working in one code repository, Claude or Claude Code may be all you need. Iris is for when a whole company depends on applications that few people fully understand.