versus assistants
ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini are better than IKI at almost everything that starts with a blank prompt. None of them is trying to be the place your own material lives. That is the whole difference, and it decides which one you want open.
| IKI | ChatGPT | Claude | Perplexity | NotebookLM | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Where your library lives | Markdown files on your device | Their servers | Their servers | Their servers | Google Drive |
| Works with no connection | Yes, capture, search and on-device answers | No | No | No | No |
| Answers limited to what you saved | Always, with citations into your own files | Only if you paste it in | Only if you paste it in | Searches the web | Yes, per notebook |
| Saving takes | Two taps from any app | Copy and paste | Copy and paste | Copy and paste | Upload a file |
| Your notes train nothing | Nothing leaves the phone unless you ask | Depends on settings | Depends on settings | Depends on settings | Depends on settings |
| If you stop paying | Everything still opens; they are your files | History stays behind a login | History stays behind a login | History stays behind a login | Notebooks stay in Drive |
| Frontier model when you want one | Bring your own key, used only when you ask | Built in | Built in | Built in | Built in |
Gemini behaves like ChatGPT for everything in this table, with Google's account rules on top.
where we are honestly better
Ask an assistant what you thought about a topic and it will write something plausible. Ask IKI and you get sentences from your own saves with a citation that jumps to the paragraph. When your library has nothing, it says so instead of inventing.
The material has to get in somehow. With an assistant that means copying text into a chat. With IKI it is the share sheet, a button in Safari, a screenshot, a sentence spoken to your watch, and the processing happens after, on its own.
Chat history is theirs. IKI writes markdown files into a folder you own, so the library survives a lapsed subscription, an app you got bored of, and us.
what they do better
Writing code, drafting from nothing, reasoning about a problem you have not saved anything about, searching today's web: an assistant wins every time. IKI has one on-device model and, if you want it, your own Claude key for the heavy questions. It is not trying to replace the assistant, only to stop being the reason you paste your life into one.