Knock vs Auth0
Side-by-side trajectory, velocity, and editorial themes.
Knock is rewiring notifications infrastructure to be configured by agents, not just developers.
Knock is methodically rebuilding its primitives — audiences, layouts, reusable steps, in-app guides — so they're versioned, environment-promotable, and addressable from an agent in addition to the dashboard and CLI. The recent run shows a clear pattern: each new feature ships with at least one agent-accessible path. Underneath, the engineering surface is also tightening, with reusable request input schemas making composability less guesswork.
Knock is positioning its platform as agent-buildable messaging infrastructure rather than just a developer SDK. Skills, dynamic audiences, and schema'd reusable steps are the building blocks of a future where a product team agent (or Knock's own) can spin up an entire notification flow without a developer touching code. The Layouts 2.0 refresh and Guides toolbar work in parallel to harden the human surfaces that remain.
Expect Knock to publish a more opinionated agent surface — likely an MCP-style server or an in-product agent that orchestrates skills against dynamic audiences. The reusable-input-schemas release is the kind of plumbing that precedes a 'build a workflow from a prompt' demo, so a higher-level natural-language workflow composer is the most probable next move.
Auth0 ships Auth for MCP GA and starts unbundling the rest of identity for AI agents.
Auth0 just made Auth for MCP generally available — a bundle of CIMD client registration, On-Behalf-Of token exchange, and OAuth resource-parameter compatibility purpose-built for AI agents talking to MCP servers. Around it, the team is reworking core identity primitives: non-unique emails reached GA, online refresh tokens entered beta with session binding, and the Account API now supports step-up auth for sensitive scopes. Smaller polish items (CMD+K palette, Resend GA, signing algorithm coverage) round out the release stream.
Auth0 is repositioning from a B2C/B2B login provider to an authorization layer for agent ecosystems. The MCP work is the centerpiece, but the supporting moves — session-bound refresh tokens, step-up auth on the Account API, non-unique emails — all point at use cases where users, agents, and resources have more complex relationships than classic OIDC was designed for. Outbound event streams to AWS EventBridge and Okta Workflows extend the same direction outward.
Expect Auth for MCP to gain a managed catalog of pre-vetted MCP clients and deeper Actions-based policy hooks for OBO token exchange, plus online refresh tokens reaching GA within a quarter.
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