Start here
Generalist agents and specialist agents
Why a general assistant is a poor accountant, and what a specialist agent does differently.
Generalist agents are good at almost everything. Specialist agents are trusted with one thing that really matters. You want both.
Two kinds of agent
Most people who use AI now have a generalist: a personal agent that can draft an email, plan a trip, research a supplier and summarise a meeting. It's the right tool for the hundred small jobs in a day.
A specialist agent is different. It's built around one domain: it holds the system of record, has the tools to act on it, and has been trained, tested and constrained for that work. A coding agent that lives in your repository is a specialist. So is Finn.
Nobody asks their general assistant to deploy to production or to file their tax. Not because it isn't clever, but because those jobs need the system, the tools, the memory and the accountability that only a specialist carries.
Side by side
| A general AI agent | Finn | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the numbers live | In the conversation, until it ends | In a double-entry ledger that always balances |
| What it can do | Explain, draft, calculate | 255 actions on your actual books, including filing |
| Memory of your business | Whatever fits in the chat, or a few saved notes | Every conversation, your preferences, your decisions, your team |
| Where tax answers come from | The open web | Official sources in 27 countries, cited |
| Maths | Generated by the model | Done by code, exactly, every time |
| Filing | Tells you how | Files VAT with HMRC and accounts with Companies House |
| Your team | One person, one chat | Everyone on one set of books, one Finn who knows what each of them said |
| Accountability | None | You approve, every action is logged, a person is a message away |
Better together
Finn isn't trying to replace the agent you already use. She plugs into it. Connect Finn to ChatGPT or Claude and your general agent can ask her about your books, the same way it would hand a coding job to a coding agent. The generalist stays your everyday assistant, and the specialist keeps the books.
See Open to other agents.