Autonom8 vs Flowable (2026)

Workflows reach outside systems through service tasks, which run JavaScript or TypeScript services, Java classes or expressions to call web services, APIs and databases as a step in the process. Credentials for those calls can sit in secure variables, and A8Flow has built in SMS providers, MSG91 and Prowtext, for one time passwords, password resets and task notices. Each integration is written as a custom service, with no catalog of ready connectors. Agent tools are still on the way, so an AI agent cannot call an outside system itself today.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio services, service tasks and ai-agents, flow integrationread 2026-10-12

Agents call tools to query data sources, call APIs and take actions, and tools can be attached to a whole agent or to one operation so a capability is only available where it is needed. Around the agents, cases and processes reach other systems through about 30 connectors, among them Salesforce sObjects, SharePoint documents, ABBYY document capture and Apache Camel, plus HTTP tasks, MuleSoft and Power Automate tasks, a service registry for REST services and an OpenAPI generator. External and A2A agents hand work to Salesforce Agentforce, Azure AI Foundry or any agent that speaks A2A.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/concepts/tools/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

A8Studio builds each app around a BPMN journey with user, service, script, send, receive, manual and business rule tasks, so one process can run steps in sequence or in parallel across people, systems and AI agent steps. Assisted journeys have several actors working a case, such as loan origination, while Solo journeys let one customer complete a flow made of form, condition, timer, webhook and service nodes. Deployed apps run in the A8Flow runtime, which moves each instance through its steps and tracks it to completion, and A8Flow processes and Solo sessions can call each other.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio journey, task types and solo nodes, autonom8.com a8flowread 2026-10-12

Work runs on BPMN processes, CMMN cases and DMN decisions, and agents are steps inside them through the AI Agent task. The orchestrator agent coordinates several agents and outside APIs within a case. Each time the case changes it reads what the case allows, reasons about the best next step, and takes it or proposes it. Agent calls can run outside the database transaction, so a long model call does not hold up the case, and the case model decides which data each agent sees and where it may act.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/introduction/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Work reaches a running app on its own. A8Chat takes customer messages from channels such as Facebook Messenger through a webhook, and BPMN receive tasks hold a process until a message arrives from an outside system.

A webhook node hands a third party a callback address, then authenticates the caller, checks the incoming data and moves the journey on when the provider reports back, as with a payment or identity check. Server side functions can be exposed as endpoints that outside systems call, protected by an API key. Timer nodes pause a journey for anything from 30 seconds to 30 days, though nothing starts a new run on a schedule.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com chat integration, solo webhook and timer nodes, receive tasks and expose endpointread 2026-10-12

Processes and cases start or move on from outside events. Inbound channels in the event registry listen on Kafka, JMS, RabbitMQ, AWS SQS, email, REST and Apache Camel, and an event registry start subscribes to a channel and starts a new instance, or only one per set of correlation values. Timer, message and signal start events cover schedules and messages, and agents other than the orchestrator can also be started directly over the REST API when the agent model allows it.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/bpmn/reference/event-registry-start/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Agents in A8Studio work from the instructions, variables and output fields set on each agent, with workflow data passed in when the agent runs. Knowledge bases for agents are still to come, so today an agent cannot search a company's own files or policies, and nothing ingests or indexes them for it. A8iQ studies operational data from running workflows to produce process metrics, and agents do not draw on it as company knowledge.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio ai-agentsread 2026-10-12

A knowledge base in Flowable Design turns policies, product documentation, FAQs and other content into a semantically indexed store. Content comes in from folder paths or uploads, is extracted and split automatically, and is embedded in Elasticsearch 8, an OpenAI vector store or a custom store, with tunable top K, candidate and similarity settings. Knowledge agents query it at run time, and the same knowledge base can serve processes, forms or a standalone search.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/knowledge-base/introduction/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Long running workflows keep their state across channels and steps until they finish, and the variables on each assisted instance can be viewed, edited or deleted by users with the right permissions. The Export Application API returns those variables for instances started within a chosen window. Agents start each run from their instructions and the variables a workflow passes in, and keep nothing they can recall in a later, separate run.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com flow history access control and export application api, autonom8.com a8flowread 2026-10-12

An agent's context is the case it works in. The orchestrator agent reasons from the current case data and state and keeps its chat with users inside the case, so what it knows lasts as long as the case does. Other agents receive the input their operation defines on each call. There is no memory store an agent reads from one case to the next, such as what it learned about a customer last time.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/reference/orchestrator-agent/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

People can be placed at any point in a process. When a journey reaches a user task, A8Flow creates a task and the instance waits until a person completes it, whether that means filling a form, checking data or signing off.

Tasks go to a named assignee, candidate users or candidate groups, show up in My Tasks and My Group Tasks lists, can be claimed or reassigned under permission rules, and can send SMS notices to the group. A8Chat pairs its chatbot with live chat support.

Review points are designed into each journey by its builder, and there is no separate setting that holds an AI agent's output for approval.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio user tasks, flow tasks and group managementread 2026-10-12

The orchestrator agent can be set to suggest instead of act, presenting its next step as an option in the case chat for a person to accept, and high stakes actions always wait for a human. User tasks, including a four eyes check pattern, put sign off wherever the case needs it. Guardrail agents check content before and after each model call, blocking prompt injection or hate speech, redacting phone numbers, emails and card numbers, and rejecting off topic or non compliant answers.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/reference/orchestrator-agent/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Access is controlled at a fine grain. A8Flow signs users in through OpenID Connect single sign on, with an optional mixed mode that keeps passwords alongside it and a default group for first time users.

Authorization rules allow or deny each user or group specific actions on process definitions, instances, tasks, users and other resources, and A8Studio policies build custom roles with separate rights to edit AI agents, deploy live or export audit logs.

Secure variables are encrypted with AES 256 GCM, variable groups carry their own access lists, and audit logs are immutable and record the source IP of each request. The product docs show no SOC 2 report or ISO 27001 certificate behind these controls.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com flow sso, authorization and audit logs, studio policy and secure variablesread 2026-10-12

Flowable holds ISO 27001 and SOC 2, and its cloud supports single sign on through OAuth and SAML, with Entra ID for identity and SSO on dedicated environments. Each agent sees only the data its task needs and can act only where the case allows, and agents exposed over REST answer only to user groups listed on the agent model. The Work MCP server enforces the same permissions and tenant scoping as the Work REST API, so an assistant can do nothing the signed in user could not. Flowable also runs a public trust center.

Sourceflowable.com/product/enterprise-cloudread 2026-10-12

Each run can be traced afterward. The Solo history lists finished sessions as complete, expired, errored or timed out, and its timeline shows the exact path a session took, including the branch it followed at each condition. Assisted history covers running and completed instances and their variables.

The A8Flow audit log records every create, edit and delete on tasks, users, deployments and settings, tagged with the user, process instance, task and source IP. Application logs stream live during a session and are kept in the cloud for search and export through the a8flow command line tool. What an AI agent was prompted with and returned inside a step does not appear in these views.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com solo history, flow audit logs, logs and cliread 2026-10-12

Agents are audited by default at three levels. The basic level records each agent instance's start and end, status, definition, starting user, calling case and task. The low level exchange adds the operation invoked, the content sent to the model, what the user saw and the request and response tokens. For knowledge agents, the sources used and how closely each matched are stored as well, so retrieval can be tuned. Audit records sit in history tables apart from the running agents and are read in Flowable Control.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/concepts/auditing/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Workflows, forms and agents run on Autonom8's own cloud, deployed from A8Studio into A8Flow environments that an organization sets up with a runtime address and an API key. The rules engine is the exception. DMN Hub runs as a Docker container with its own Postgres and Redis on the customer's systems, so decision tables can be built, stored and evaluated in house while A8Flow calls them through its SDK. Workflows themselves have no region choice, private cloud or self hosted runtime.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com dmnhub overview and install, studio environments and deploymentread 2026-10-12

Flowable Cloud runs on Microsoft Azure with EU and US hosting as standard. Cloud Shared is a multi tenant service with logical data separation, while Cloud Dedicated gives each customer a physically separate environment with its own release schedule, dev, test and staging environments, VPN integrations and other regions on request. The same platform installs on premises or in a customer's own cloud with Docker, Helm charts or WAR files.

Sourceflowable.com/product/enterprise-cloudread 2026-10-12

Builders start from shared parts more than finished agents. The Prompt Gallery holds prebuilt prompts for common jobs that fill in an agent's instructions, and Generate Prompt turns a plain request into a structured one. A8Marketplace is a store of form widgets an organization installs, built with the create a8 component command line tool, and the A8Studio library carries flows, templates, components, services, integrations and themes. There is no catalog of ready made agents or journeys for a job such as loan origination or account opening.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio ai-agents and marketplaceread 2026-10-12

Builders start from agent types, utility, knowledge, document, orchestrator, external, A2A, guardrail and evaluator, each a component they configure with their own prompts and operations. Any model in Flowable Design can be marked as a template so teams copy their own processes, cases and agents, and worked examples include a document analysis agent. There is no catalog of ready made agents or case apps to install for a job such as onboarding or claims.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/model-templates/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

The builder picks the model behind each agent from a configuration panel, choosing among Google Gemini (Gemini Pro, Gemini Flash), OpenAI (GPT 4, GPT 4o, GPT 4o mini) and Anthropic (Sonnet, Opus, Haiku) models, with guidance to weigh cost against capability. Temperature, output token limit (4,000 by default) and top p are set per agent, and output can be plain text or JSON with typed, required fields. TARS, the code helper inside A8Studio, runs on GPT 3.5 Turbo. There is no bring your own key option and no automatic routing or fallback between models.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio ai-agents and tarsread 2026-10-12

Each agent sets its own vendor, model, temperature, endpoint, custom headers and authentication. Supported vendors are OpenAI, Anthropic and Azure OpenAI, and the OpenAI and Anthropic settings also cover compatible endpoints such as a locally hosted model on Ollama or vLLM. Admins can instead define shared agent connections that agents reference by key. On Cloud Shared, agents connect to the supported providers, and custom models on Cloud Dedicated are still to come.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/concepts/model-settings/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Four APIs open the platform to code, each reached with a scoped API key that carries its own expiry date. The Deployment API pushes A8Studio apps into the A8Flow runtime, the Export Application API returns instance data and variables for any window up to 24 hours, the Start New Process API opens an assisted case remotely, and Check Dedupe tests for duplicate records. Android and iOS SDKs embed A8Flow in mobile apps, the a8flow command line tool handles sign in and logs, and services and functions are written in JavaScript or TypeScript against the A8Data, A8Config, A8Astro and A8Func SDKs.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com flow api keys, export application api, sdks and cliread 2026-10-12

Flowable Work has a REST API for processes, cases, tasks, users and agents, and the open source engines add Java APIs for embedding. The Work MCP server lets outside AI assistants browse process and case definitions, act on running instances and tasks, look up users, groups and master data and invoke actions, returning the same data as the REST API under the same permissions. It is off by default and needs an AI connector license, and a separate Design MCP server works on models.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/ai/ai-work-mcp-server/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Tuning happens after launch. A8iQ tracks business metrics across activated workflows so teams can adapt each workflow to those metrics in a continuing loop, and flow mining shows key measures and bottlenecks for each flow and each version over a chosen period, so a new version can be compared with the last one in production. There is no test suite or quality gate that checks an AI agent's answers before a release.

Sourceautonom8.com a8iq, docs.autonom8.com flow miningread 2026-10-12

Flowable Design runs automated unit tests for every agent type except the orchestrator before an app goes live. A test runs the agent on a given input, asserts on the response text, structured fields, guardrail outcomes or extracted data, and mocks the services the agent calls, and Flowable Inspect runs the test sets in bulk. In production, evaluators judge each answer for correctness, tone, faithfulness or format, through an evaluator agent or an outside service, and record the verdict without holding up the reply.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/reactmodel/agent/concepts/testing/index.htmlread 2026-10-12

Autonom8 connects to other systems through services, APIs and SMS providers, and its agents work on the data a workflow hands them. Scanner, selfie, signature and video KYC widgets collect documents and identity checks from customers inside the app's own forms. Nothing in the platform drives a browser, a desktop or another application's screen on a user's behalf.

Sourcedocs.autonom8.com studio services and widgets, autonom8.com a8flowread 2026-10-12

The Flowable RPA Framework client runs bots built with the open source RPA Framework, either robot files or Robocorp actions and tasks, on a host of the customer's choosing and connects to Flowable over the REST API. A bot runs as a step in a case or process, for example pulling data out of a desktop client application, and hands the result back to the case when it finishes. The client installs with pip.

Sourcedocumentation.flowable.com/latest/develop/external-clients/rpaframework/introduction/index.htmlread 2026-10-12