Knock vs Ably
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.
Ably pivots its developer surface toward AI agents as first-class consumers
Ably's developer surface has been visibly pivoting toward AI agents over the last six weeks. The CLI hit v1.0 with structured JSON output envelopes, hint fields for self-healing agents, and unified --force semantics. Two weeks later v1.1 added `ably init`, which installs the CLI plus Agent Skills bundles directly into Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and VS Code in one step. A new AI Transport SDK lands separately, with end-to-end tool-calling and React providers for the Vercel AI SDK.
Ably is building two integration stories in parallel — agents as CLI users (via Agent Skills) and agents as transport consumers (via the AI Transport SDK). Together they bracket the workflow: agents read live data through the SDK and operate Ably itself through the CLI. The traditional client-library stream (JS, Python, Laravel) continues at steady pace in the background, with LiveObjects formally graduating to GA on the protocol-6 update.
Expect the AI Transport SDK to add tool-call adapters for at least one more AI runtime beyond Vercel — most likely the OpenAI Agents SDK or Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK — and Agent Skills coverage to expand to additional AI clients (Cline, Aider, Continue). Watch for the LiveObjects API to surface inside the chat/AI surfaces.
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