Autonom8 vs OutSystems (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 directly. Server actions are exposed to an agent, and the AI model autonomously decides which action or sequence of actions is appropriate by analyzing the prompts and the purpose of each exposed action, calling a single action, a sequence, or the same action repeatedly.

Agents connect to APIs, databases, ERP, CRM and legacy systems through prebuilt connectors and extensible services, wrapping and extending core systems without replacement, and Model Context Protocol support gives agents direct access to enterprise systems, external tools and services. Forge components extend the tool surface, such as OmniDoc2MD, whose server action can be exposed as an agent action.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com AI agent actions documentation, outsystems.com Agent Workbench GA announcementread 2026-08-31

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

Named multi agent architectures include a shared memory pattern, where agents read from and write to shared state and communicate implicitly by modifying it, and a network pattern of autonomous peer agents interacting in a graph like structure without a central controller.

Agents combine with ODC workflows, where automatic activities call an agent's service action, human activities pause for approval, and validation branches route invalid results back to a prior step to rerun the agent with feedback. Agents are coordinated side by side, in sequence, in hierarchy, and with or without humans in the loop, through a visual interface. Agentic Enterprise Orchestration, launched at ONE, is the current generation of this layer.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com agentic patterns and building agentic workflows documentationread 2026-08-31

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

Agent runs start from three entry routes, an Event Handler, a Timer or a REST Expose. Timers are background scheduled jobs configured with OutSystems schedule syntax and forced on demand through the Wake action, events run through the platform's event driven architecture, and REST Expose makes an agent callable as an inbound HTTP endpoint. Agents are additionally published as service actions consumed by any app in the tenant, embedded into web and mobile interfaces, and reachable externally through the Agent Experience MCP and A2A services.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com monitoring and troubleshooting apps, use timers and event-driven architecture documentationread 2026-08-31

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

Agents are grounded in the OutSystems Enterprise Context Graph, an operational knowledge layer over the customer's application estate that OutSystems says grounds any coding tool or LLM in shared context, spanning entities, relationships, roles and business logic.

Agent configuration begins with grounding data that connects the agent to internal databases or external APIs so responses rest on current factual information, and integrated semantic search shipped with Agentic Enterprise Orchestration at ONE.

Forge components ingest documents, converting Word, PDF, spreadsheet, presentation, HTML and plain text binaries to Markdown while preserving structure and extracting images.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com creating an agent and AI agent actions documentation, outsystems.com ONE 2026 platform announcementread 2026-08-31

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

OutSystems offers a memory primitive that the developer wires to a store. The StoreMemory action in AgentFlow lets developers explicitly save previous user queries, model outputs, intermediate decisions or system states for recall in later interactions, retrieved into subsequent prompts. A SessionId passed by the consumer app writes conversation state to an ODC entity in the customer's own database, and a shared memory pattern coordinates multiple agents. OutSystems does not describe a retention period, purge path or review and deletion surface for stored memory.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com agentic apps in ODC pageread 2026-09-29

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

Agents can be held for human oversight on high stakes or low confidence decisions. A Human activity element placed in the workflow pauses execution until an assigned user or role acts, the assigned person sees the agent's output on a task screen and clicks Approve or Reject, and that action raises an event closing the activity so the workflow resumes on the human's decision.

In one example, a vendor approval workflow pauses after the agent generates a risk report. A validation branch can route a rejected result back to a prior step to rerun the agent with feedback. Separately, Agent Guardrails are enforced in the runtime and cannot be bypassed once enabled, covering prompt attack blocking, PII masking and harmful content filtering.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com building agentic workflows and agentic patterns documentationread 2026-08-31

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

OutSystems runs a public Trust Center at security.outsystems.com with certification records and security advisories. Attestations include SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001 and ISO 22301 certified by BSI, ISO 27017 and ISO 27018 for cloud security, and CSA STAR self assessment, with OutSystems Developer Cloud separately holding SOC 2 attestation evaluated by Baker Tilly and SOC 1 Type 2 attestation.

An identity service provides role based access to screens, data and logic flows with administrator controlled permissions, single sign on and external authentication, and a formal logical access procedure. Agent Guardrails are enforced in the runtime rather than at the application layer, detecting and blocking prompt attacks, masking or blocking PII before data reaches a model provider, and filtering harmful content.

Sourceoutsystems.com evaluation guide security and certifications pages, security.outsystems.com Trust Center, ODC attestation announcementsread 2026-08-31

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

Distributed traces treat an agent as a filterable asset in its own right, filterable by stage, asset, element type, trace status, total duration, date and time, and user, retained up to four weeks and queryable in two week intervals, and spans are aggregated so an agent's execution can be read both as its own trace and as a span inside a calling app's trace.

Logs carry Error, Warning and Information severities, are generated automatically or through LogMessage actions developers place, and link to related logs and activities for root cause work. Agent Evaluations return quality scores with full execution traces.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com monitoring and troubleshooting apps documentationread 2026-08-31

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

With ODC self hosted deployment, customers run their apps, data and AI agents in their own private cloud, public cloud, or on premises Kubernetes infrastructure while OutSystems continues to manage platform services, with single tenant runtime provisioning from the ODC Portal and a secure pull mechanism for updates.

OutSystems aims this at customers who need absolute control over hosting environments for data residency, security or regulatory compliance mandates. A secure private gateway connects ODC to on premises databases, APIs and enterprise systems without moving data.

A self hosted provisioning repository supporting Kubernetes and OpenShift is published on OutSystems' GitHub, and the OutSystems 11 platform runs on self managed infrastructure across multiple cloud providers and on premises.

Sourceoutsystems.com ODC self-hosted product update, developer cloud product page and deployment evaluation guide, github.com/OutSystems/outsystems-hybrid-provisionread 2026-08-31

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

Agent Workbench shipped an agent marketplace at general availability alongside MCP support. Forge, a public browsable catalog of numbered, individually addressable and documented components, installs components into an app and exposes their server actions to agents, OmniDoc2MD among them.

Agent creation is template-driven, starting from defined components for grounding data, prompt, model and tools, and a Mentor capability in beta generates a full agent configuration including instructions, tools and model settings from a plain-language description with conversational refinement. OutSystems launched its first end to end Agentic Industry Solution, a Banking Solution for Loan Origination, at ONE, as the first of a family.

Sourceoutsystems.com Agent Workbench GA announcement, ONE 2026 announcement and Q2 2026 product update, outsystems.com Forgeread 2026-08-31

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

In Agent Workbench a model is connected once and reused across agents, with support at general availability for AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI and Anthropic, plus Gemini, Cohere, Mistral, Databricks, AI2 and IBM watsonx, custom built models on Vertex AI and open source models on Hugging Face. An expanded Amazon Bedrock partnership gives teams access to more than one hundred large language models through a single set of credentials, and models can be swapped as pricing or performance shifts without rewriting underlying logic. OutSystems pitches the platform as insulating customers from LLM lock in.

Sourceoutsystems.com Agent Workbench GA announcement, Q2 2026 product update and ONE 2026 platform announcementread 2026-08-31

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

ODC publishes REST APIs for the platform itself, authenticated through API clients using OpenID Connect over OAuth 2.0 client credentials, with twelve named references (User and Access Management, Portfolio v2, Build Operations, Native Mobile Build, Deployments, Dependency Management, Asset Repository, Asset Configurations, Environment Configurations, Code Quality, External Library Generation Service and Subscription). Agents are also exposed through REST Expose as inbound endpoints, and OutSystems has announced Agent Experience as a layer of A2A and MCP services, without publishing addresses for those services.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com ODC REST APIs pageread 2026-09-29

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

Agent Evaluations validate agent logic against a Golden Dataset of inputs, expected outputs and expected tool calls, returning quality scores and full execution traces, with an automatic judge scoring results rather than requiring manual inspection.

OutSystems pitches Evaluations as replacing manual one off testing with a repeatable validation process, and advanced agent evaluations, launched at ONE, as validating the outcomes agents are responsible for the way unit tests validate code.

ODC also offers debugging with breakpoints, step by step execution and runtime value inspection, and automated testing strategies for application delivery.

Sourceoutsystems.com ODC Agent Evaluations product update and ONE 2026 announcement, success.outsystems.com agentic development documentationread 2026-08-31

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

Agents act through server actions selected by the model, through prebuilt connectors to ERP, CRM, databases and legacy systems, and through Model Context Protocol, all of which are programmatic interfaces. OutSystems does not describe browser control, navigation, form filling, screen interaction, visual grounding or desktop automation, and makes no claim in that territory. The platform's legacy modernization path analyzes COBOL and Lotus Notes systems and rebuilds their functionality as new applications through code transformation.

Sourcesuccess.outsystems.com agentic apps and AI agent actions documentation, outsystems.com ONE 2026 announcementread 2026-08-31