# Who Speedwave is for

Speedwave is built for any software development team, and it works whether or not you write code yourself.

## Developers

If you write code, the [terminal CLI](/docs/features/cli/) is likely where you will spend your time. Running `speedwave` starts the containers for your active project and opens an interactive Claude Code session inside the Claude container, with your configured integrations available. The CLI is a thin client: it needs the Speedwave Desktop app installed and its setup wizard completed at least once, because that wizard creates the virtual machine, builds the container images, and configures your tokens. Desktop also installs the `speedwave` binary onto your `PATH` for you, so the two stay on the same version.

## Non-coding team members, on Desktop

You do not need to write code to use Speedwave. The [Desktop chat app](/docs/features/desktop-app/) (`Speedwave.app`) gives you a chat window, a setup wizard, a project switcher, and native OS integrations such as a tray icon and auto-update checks. It runs Claude Code inside the container and shows the response as it arrives. You need Desktop at least once even if you go on to use only the CLI, because it is what performs setup.

Both front-ends drive the same underlying runtime. The Desktop app and the CLI link the same `speedwave-runtime` library and the same container orchestration, so a project behaves the same whichever one you open.

## Regulated-sector teams

If you work in a regulated sector, especially banking, financial services, or insurance, Speedwave's isolation and credential handling are built for you. Claude runs in a container that holds zero tokens and zero credentials and cannot reach any service directly. Instead, you get a separate isolated worker for each service, such as Slack or GitLab, that mounts only that service's own credential, read-only, so the model never sees it and a compromise in one worker cannot expose another service's secret.

Each project also picks its own model provider: Anthropic, a local model server, or OpenRouter. A local server lets you keep code and prompts on your own machine when that is a requirement for your work.

These principles are inherited from Speedwave v1 and treated as fixed: a change that would relax one of them is rejected, and a feature that would need one relaxed is redesigned instead. For the full picture, see [why security-first](/docs/security/).