Riley
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Riley vs Claude + Slack DIY

A great model, or a coworker built around one?

audit the outcome · verify activation · prove it every Friday

Claude in Slack is a smart text generator. Riley is a system built around it, with GBP integration, PMS sync, approval queues, and a per-tenant outcome ledger.

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Riley

Free $0 · Starter $99 · Growth $249 · Studio $499/mo

AI coworker for dental practices. Drafts review replies, runs recall, recovers missed calls, and ships a weekly digest in Slack.

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Claude + Slack

$25 to $60/seat/mo + glue work

DIY: install Anthropic's Claude Slack app, prompt it manually. Powerful model, no glue, no workflow.

Short version

Four bullets, the whole comparison.

  • Claude is a model. Riley is a product built on Claude (and other models) tuned for dental.
  • Claude in Slack has no GBP, no PMS, no approval queue, no AEO tracking.
  • If you have a developer to wire it up, you can build a less-good Riley yourself in 6 months.
  • If you don't, you're paying for the model and getting none of the system.

Feature by feature

What's actually different.

Feature
Riley
Claude + Slack

AI intelligence

Multi-provider AI routed per task with automatic failover
Single-model only

GBP integration

Yes
No

PMS integration

PMS bridge: Open Dental, Eaglesoft, Denticon (setup required)
No

Review reply drafting

Pre-built skill
You build it

PHI scanner

Yes
No

Approval queue

Yes
No

Outcome ledger

Yes
No

Vertical pack (dental)

Yes
No

AEO signal tracking

Yes
No

Phone receptionist

Outbound phone + missed-call SMS recovery (inbound Q3 2026)
No

Why practices switch

The difference that shows up in your week.

A model isn't a product

Claude is brilliant in isolation. To get it to do front-office work in your practice, you'd build the OAuth, the approval queue, the PMS sync, the outcome ledger, the AEO scoring. Riley did.

Routing across providers

Riley routes across multiple AI providers based on the task and your egress policy, with automatic failover. Claude-direct gives you one model. Riley gives you the best model for each job.

Vertical knowledge baked in

Dental workflow library, 6-signal AI-search visibility scoring, dental-specific training. Claude knows dentistry from training data; Riley has it baked into how she works.

Outcome ledger as moat

Riley writes every recovered patient and posted reply to a per-tenant ledger. Cancel anytime, take the data. Claude-direct gives you a chat history.

When to choose which

Not a fit for everyone. Honest take.

Choose Riley if

You want the result, not the build. Reviews drafted, calls recovered, AEO ticking up, without managing prompts or wiring OAuth.

Choose Claude + Slack if

You have a developer who wants to build a custom agent stack and treats Claude as a primitive. That's a valid path; it's just a 6-month one.

See it in your own practice.

Start with an outcome audit, activation checks, and a proof path before anything goes out live.

Get outcome auditBook a 15-min demo