Knock vs Tailscale
Side-by-side trajectory, velocity, and editorial themes.
Knock keeps widening from a notifications API into an agent-driven engagement platform
Knock remains a developer-first notifications infrastructure product, but recent releases push past send-a-message plumbing. The last month added warehouse sync for delivery and engagement events, a hosted end-user preference center, dashboard MFA, and faster workflow testing. Data now moves both into Knock (Shopify) and back out to the warehouse.
Two arcs stand out: an agentic control surface — a Slack agent that creates and schedules resources, plus dashboard/CLI/agent parity for building audiences — and a maturing enterprise posture via MFA, the preference center, and warehouse analytics. Knock is positioning as a system of record for customer engagement, not just a delivery layer.
Expect the agent surface to deepen so more resources are manageable conversationally, and more data connectors after Shopify, given the warehouse-sync and dynamic-audiences direction.
Tailscale deepens enterprise identity while quietly building agent-access infrastructure
Tailscale's recent releases concentrate on enterprise identity and governance — nested group sync, self-serve identity-provider switching, OAuth-app device provisioning, multi-tenant policy scoping, and Azure Blob log streaming — atop routine client bug-fix releases. Just outside this window, its Aperture chat and identity-aware MCP connectors signal a move into AI-agent access built on tailnet identity.
The near-term direction is making Tailscale the identity and access-control fabric for both people and, increasingly, agents. The group and IdP work hardens the enterprise story, while the alpha Aperture connectors and sandboxes extend tailnet identity and access controls to LLM agents and their tool calls.
Expect continued enterprise identity and governance features, with gradual promotion of the Aperture agent-access connectors and sandboxes out of alpha as that bet matures.
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