BAND vs Temporal Cortex (2026)

Connected agents get platform tools for messaging, contacts and tasks inside Band. A Slack adapter bridges an agent into Slack threads, and an A2A adapter forwards room messages to outside agents. The tools a connected agent uses to act in other systems are its own. Beyond these bridges, Band offers no connector catalog or custom tools of its own for acting in outside systems.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/integrations/overview and integrations/sdks/tutorials/slackread 2026-09-21

Agents get 18 scheduling tools over Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook (through OAuth 2.0) and CalDAV calendars such as iCloud and Fastmail. They include contact search across Google People and Microsoft Graph and a book_slot tool that writes events. Agents reach them through Temporal Cortex's MCP server, A2A or the REST API, and each call reads or writes the customer's calendars with authentication.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-22

Chat rooms coordinate many agents and humans with @mention routing and message visibility rules. Agents from different frameworks delegate to each other across rooms, and chat tasks with a room board track work as it moves between participants.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/core-concepts/chat-rooms and api/agent-api/agent-api-chat-tasksread 2026-09-21

A multi step booking is carried out by the platform itself. The book_slot tool locks the slot, verifies there is no conflict, writes the event and releases the lock, rolling everything back if a step fails. On the managed platform, distributed locking coordinates concurrent agents.

The customer's agent sequences the other tools inside its own framework, following an orient, resolve, query and book pattern. The booking runs as one transaction on Temporal Cortex's side, with rollback, and is safe to retry. There are no workflows that combine deterministic nodes with autonomous agent steps, and no branching or routing.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-22

Agents receive real time events over WebSocket when they are @mentioned in a chat room, assigned to a room, sent a contact request or given a task. A Slack adapter carries Slack threads in. All of these come from other participants. Band describes no schedule, or event source in an outside system, that wakes an agent on its own.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/websocket/agent/overviewread 2026-09-21

Scheduling requests reach a Temporal Cortex user through several channels. A Temporal Link serves a booking page to people and JSON to agents, A2A Agent Cards handle negotiation between agents, and MCP tools and the REST API take requests directly. The owner's policies decide each request, and the platform's rules handle it. Nothing starts the customer's own agent on an event or a schedule. Temporal Cortex's webhooks carry inbound sign up and billing events for its own operations.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/open-schedulingread 2026-09-22

Agents bring their own knowledge, and Band coordinates them. Band offers no document ingestion, index or retrieval store over the customer's knowledge.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/welcome and llms.txtread 2026-09-21

Contact search queries Google People and Microsoft Graph live, and the availability tools read calendars live. There is no ingestion, indexing, retrieval or RAG layer over the customer's documents or company data.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-22

Connected agents get memory tools and a Memories API from Band, with full Memory API access on Enterprise. Adapters such as Letta keep memory per room, and room context stays in sync across participants. Band does not say what scope or lifetime its own memory store has.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/api/agent-api/agent-api-memories and band.ai/pricingread 2026-09-21

Settings, booking rules, caller profiles with trust levels and policies are stored. The platform applies them as rules to each request, not as context an agent reads to decide. Its distributed locks last only for a booking. There is no memory layer that keeps an agent's context across runs.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/docs/rest-apiread 2026-09-22

Humans work in the same chat rooms as agents and can see and steer their work. Contact between agents across a boundary requires consent. Band describes no gate that holds an agent's action for a person's approval before it runs.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/core-concepts/contacts and core-concepts/chat-roomsread 2026-09-21

A person can be put in front of an agent's booking. When another agent sends request_booking, the recipient's policies decide whether it is accepted automatically, held for the recipient's approval or blocked. The API's booking rules carry a confirm_before_booking setting beside minimum notice and advance booking limits.

Policies set per caller domain or trust level allow or deny requests by priority, and the content firewall strips injection attempts before any tool runs. The approval step sits at the policy layer, before the booking commits. Temporal Cortex does not say how the approval request reaches the person.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-22

An access model governs who can reach an agent, with agent visibility settings, handles, a contact system and consent for contact across boundaries. Enterprise adds multiple users and teams, with retention set to the customer's compliance needs. Band names no identity provider integration or attestation, and publishes no trust center.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/core-concepts/contacts and band.ai/pricingread 2026-09-21

SSO runs through SAML and OIDC with Okta, Azure AD and Google Workspace. Organizations get multiple users and seat management, API keys are stored only as SHA-256 hashes, and caller based policies are enforced on every request.

Data is protected with TLS 1.3 and encryption at rest with a separate schema per organization, and audit logs export to a SIEM. Several of these come on the Enterprise tier. The company says it is designed for SOC 2 Type II compliance, and one card on its Enterprise page reads SOC 2 Type II Compliance, but no SOC 2 report is published. It offers a HIPAA BAA as a contract.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/enterpriseread 2026-09-22

Tool calls, tool results, thoughts, errors and tasks appear as events in the chat room alongside messages. Band also has an activity API, Pro adds chat data export on demand, and retention is set by plan, two weeks on Free and custom on Enterprise. Band describes no audit log separate from the conversation record.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/websocket/human/chat-room/event-created and band.ai/pricingread 2026-09-21

The managed platform records what agents do. It has an activity feed of booking and calendar activity per tenant, a dashboard, and daily usage metrics counting bookings and API calls. Enterprise adds audit log export with SIEM integration and custom retention policies. The activity feed covers bookings, not every read the agent made.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/docs/rest-apiread 2026-09-22

Every plan is a hosted service, and Band publishes no self hosted, private cloud or region selection option. Connected agents run wherever their owners host them, separate from Band itself.

SourceBand, band.ai/pricing and docs.band.ai/integrations/sdks/tutorials/coding-agentsread 2026-09-21

There are three ways to deploy. A local MCP server started with npx keeps credentials on the user's machine. Temporal Cortex also runs a managed platform. The full platform (API, MCP server, database and portal) can be self hosted through Docker Compose or Terraform modules on AWS, GCP or Azure. Enterprise customers can choose US or EU data residency.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/enterpriseread 2026-09-22

Customers connect their own agents to Band. Band adds a built in demo agent, and Pro lets customers create native agents. Band describes no set of ready made agents or templates for customers to adopt.

SourceBand, band.ai homepage, pricing and docs.band.ai/getting-started/setupread 2026-09-21

The company's own Agent Skills (router, datetime and scheduling) load a ready made scheduling workflow into Claude, Cursor and other agent platforms. Enterprise admins can provision skills and policies to users. The skills cover one workflow. There is no browsable catalog of ready made workflows, templates or role specific agents. Use case guides cover recruiting, sales, healthcare and other fields.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-22

Each connected agent keeps its own model through its own framework. For Band's native agents, Band describes no model selection or routing.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/integrations/adapters and band.ai homepageread 2026-09-21

The tools work with whatever model and agent the customer runs. That covers Claude Desktop, Cursor, OpenClaw, Manus or any MCP client, plus LangGraph, CrewAI and the OpenAI Agents SDK, each with the customer's own model. Temporal Cortex names no model of its own and computes time deterministically instead of through a model, so model choice stays with the customer.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/developersread 2026-09-22

Developers get a Request API over REST for sending messages and managing rooms, contacts and memories, and a Subscriptions API over WebSocket for events. There is a published OpenAPI specification and a Python SDK. An MCP server serves AI assistants and platform automation, and an A2A gateway lets outside agents reach Band peers over HTTP and SSE.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/api/introduction, integrations/mcp/overview and integrations/sdks/tutorials/a2a-gatewayread 2026-09-21

Outside callers use a REST API with Bearer API keys covering calendars, availability, bookings, events, settings, callers, policies, keys and usage. There is also an MCP server over stdio and streamable HTTP, A2A for negotiation between agents, and packages on npm, crates.io and PyPI, with TypeScript and Python SDKs.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/docs/rest-apiread 2026-09-22

Developers building with Band's Python SDK get unit and integration testing patterns, so they can test their Band agents before running them. Band describes no evaluation harness, scored test cases or quality gate that reports on agent behavior.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/integrations/sdks/tutorials/testing-agentsread 2026-09-21

A comparison of frontier models against the Truth Engine on recurrence rules, and the company's own test counts, describe how its product performs. Customers get no way to test their own agents. There are no fixtures, datasets, scoring or quality gate for the customer's agent workflows.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/llms-full.txtread 2026-09-22

Jam Desktop brings local Claude Code sessions online through Band so they can be coordinated. Band describes no browser, desktop or computer control by an agent.

SourceBand, docs.band.ai/jam and llms.txtread 2026-09-21

The only browser channel is a booking page where people pick a slot on a Temporal Link. The tools reach calendars through provider APIs, and agents get no browser, desktop or computer control.

Sourcetemporal-cortex.com/open-schedulingread 2026-09-22