Poke vs Town (2026)

In Gmail and Outlook the assistant searches, drafts and sends mail, replies in thread with attachments, forwards, files and labels, and it creates and edits calendar events and syncs contacts.

Recipes add read and write access to Notion pages and databases, Linear and Asana projects, Todoist tasks, GitHub repositories, Vercel and Netlify deployments, Supabase, Ramp spend data, Webflow and Oura, authorized by OAuth or an API key during setup.

Any other service joins as an MCP server added by URL, with an API key or OAuth credentials, or tunneled from a local machine, and Poke discovers and calls the tools it exposes.

Sourcepoke.com/docs/managing-integrationsread 2026-10-12

Read and write integrations reach Google, Microsoft and more than fifty business tools, including Gmail (read, search, draft, send, label), Google Calendar (create meetings with Meet links, edit events), Docs, Drive, Sheets, Outlook and Microsoft 365 mail and calendar, Slack (bot and send-as-user), and read-write connectors across CRM (Salesforce, HubSpot, Attio, Pipedrive, Copper, Affinity), project tools (Asana, Jira, Linear, ClickUp, Monday.com, Notion, Todoist), finance (QuickBooks Online and Xero create invoices, Brex, Ramp, Stripe), data (Airtable, Supabase, PostHog, Google Analytics, Hex) and meetings (Zoom, Fathom, Fireflies, Granola, Gong).

Microsoft Entra has its own admin setup. Connectors are native plus Pipedream-backed, actions create, update and send, and OAuth tokens are stored, refreshed automatically and revocable per account. WhatsApp and Telegram are inbound-only. Custom MCP servers can be added too.

Sourcetown.com home; town.com/docs, /docs/safety/security; readread 2026-09-16

A single assistant carries each request across email, calendar and connected tools, so one text can ask it to send onboarding email, schedule a kickoff, create a Notion project and set check in reminders. Recipes package the integrations, an automation and onboarding questions a job needs, and automations keep running in the background on Pro and Ultra. Multistep work rests on the assistant's own planning inside the conversation, with no workflow designer or team of agents to lay out.

Sourcepoke.com/docs/creating-recipesread 2026-10-12

Routines can call other routines and mix deterministic code steps with AI steps. A routine can call another routine mid run, in which case the caller pauses until the called routine returns its result, and a parent must list the child in its Callable Routines setting before invoke_routine can call it.

AI steps handle writing, summarizing, deciding and analyzing, while deterministic steps handle filtering, formatting, aggregating and iterating over a list, as in a four step example that gathers and organizes with code, writes with AI and sends with code. Users describe a routine in plain language, set it on a trigger or schedule, and share routines across a team. Town does not describe routine versioning.

Sourcetown.com/docs/routines/custom-routines/concepts/calling-agents, /docs; readread 2026-09-16

Poke is built to message first. Real time automations run in the background on paid plans, reminders and scheduled tasks fire on their own time, and the assistant watches connected services and its memory to step in, for example adding the action items from a Granola meeting to the calendar. Users reach it by text or voice message in Apple Messages, WhatsApp, Telegram and RCS, and real time sync keeps Gmail and Outlook inboxes current.

Sourcepoke.comread 2026-10-12

Each routine can have one or more triggers and runs whenever any fires, whether that is incoming email, which runs it every time a new email arrives, a smart email trigger that judges a plain language condition with sender and subject filters, outgoing email, email to the assistant, a schedule or a manual run, with meeting start (calendar) triggers on Pro and above.

Triggers can be event driven, scheduled or conversational, several can feed one routine, and the smart trigger still runs if its condition cannot be judged. The Townie is reachable by email, Slack, text messaging, WhatsApp and Telegram (inbound-only), the web app, iOS and macOS. Event and calendar triggers need Pro or a paid team plan, and Starter is schedule only, at most once a day. An authenticated webhook endpoint can also start a routine.

Sourcetown.com/docs/routines/custom-routines/triggers, /docs/billing/plans; readread 2026-09-16

Answers draw on the user's own mail, calendar, contacts and connected apps, queried as each request runs, with web search for everything else, including maps and directions. Notion pages and databases, GitHub repositories and DeepWiki documentation become further sources once their recipes are added, and Poke can read a photo of a spreadsheet and turn it into a table or chart. The assistant keeps no searchable store of the user's files of its own, so each answer is assembled from those live sources.

Sourcepoke.com/docs/managing-integrationsread 2026-10-12

The Townie, Town's assistant, is grounded in the user's connected email, calendar, chats, contacts and tools, queried at run time rather than indexed.

Every integration added, such as Slack, Notion, Drive, Linear or GitHub, becomes another source of context, and the integrations offer search and read tools (Gmail search, Drive search and read, Box files and metadata, Notion pages and databases, Granola and Fireflies transcripts).

Access to connected sources follows each account's permissions and the routine's account scope, and new knowledge comes from connecting a source, not from retraining. No index or search layer over connected content persists between runs. The Wiki and memories summarize the user rather than index their content.

Sourcetown.com/docs/features/context-and-memory, /docs integration directory; readread 2026-09-16

Poke keeps memories about the person it works for and combines them with connected services to act at the right moment, while the human operators behind Poke Human see only the details of their task, never the chat history, memories or integrations. Deleting the account clears data within about 24 hours, with backups and legal holds taking longer. What a memory holds, how long it lasts and how a single memory is reviewed or removed are left unsaid.

Sourcepoke.com/faqread 2026-10-12

The Townie remembers who the user is, their preferences, and notes on contacts and people. Memories are either global, applying to everything across all routines, or specific to one routine, and a run automatically receives all global memories plus those for that routine. Memory carries over between Slack, email, the app and the Mac app, and users view and delete memories in Settings > Profile or by asking, for example to forget a preference about Friday afternoons, and can add, change or remove anything.

A Wiki synthesizing profile, preferences, goals and projects is refreshed every night, retiring what is stale, and is editable line by line, with Recent Updates showing what changed. Memories last until the user removes them, with nightly retirement of stale entries, and can be deleted without deleting any email, event or document. Town does not say what should stay out of long term memory.

Sourcetown.com/docs/features/context-and-memory, /docs/features/wiki; readread 2026-09-16

The assistant acts on what the user texts it, drafting and sending email, booking calendar events and running automations in the background. Control comes through the conversation itself, by disconnecting an integration or by asking Poke to trim busy automations, and there is no approval setting or rule that holds a kind of action for sign off. Poke Human brings in a person for hard errands, a service that does the task instead of checking the agent's work.

Sourcepoke.com/docsread 2026-10-12

Approval modes are configurable at the routine, tool and session level. Every routine has a default mode, which is autonomous, approval required or read only, and in approval required mode, actions that make changes create approval requests with approve or reject options and run only after the user approves them. Per-tool permission levels override the routine mode (Auto, Ask each time, Always allow), so labeling can run autonomously while email sending always waits.

Chat sessions run "Ask before any changes" by default, "Always allow safe actions" or "Allow all actions", with Allow once and Always allow per approval. Town also flags routines that combine private data, untrusted input and external sending (a lethal-trifecta warning) when they are saved, and keeps external-send tools on approval under safe mode. Low-risk and high-risk actions can run under different autonomy modes, and the warning explains why a checkpoint fired. Approvals arrive in the app and through notifications, with no routing into ticketing systems.

Sourcetown.com/docs/safety/modes-approvals, /docs/safety/security; readread 2026-09-16

Accounts are personal, tied to one phone number and opened through a Google or Microsoft account, with no team workspace, roles or single sign on. Interaction applies reasonable physical, technical and organizational safeguards, follows Google's Limited Use rules for Workspace data, and keeps data from users on Maximum Privacy out of model training. Poke offers buyers no SOC 2 report, ISO certification or trust center.

Sourcepoke.com/privacyread 2026-10-12

Town is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, with its security controls independently audited, and it links to a Security Portal and a Subprocessors list. Routines operate within strict account boundaries with configurable scope (the trigger account only by default, all accounts, or specific accounts), tools can only reach accounts connected through OAuth with revocable access, and optional domain allowlists and recipient limits apply to email.

Prompt validation blocks instruction-override and exfiltration patterns, and lethal-trifecta detection flags routines that combine private data, untrusted input and external sending. Data is not used to train AI models unless the user opts in, and is encrypted in transit and at rest. People sign in with Google or Microsoft accounts, including Microsoft Entra ID, and Teams plans add domain capture.

An Entra admin can grant consent for the whole tenant and then either let every user in the tenant sign in or restrict access to chosen users and security groups, and Google Workspace has its own admin guide. Town does not mention SAML single sign on or SCIM provisioning for team admins. SOC 2 Type 1 and Type 2 reports, the latest penetration test and a CASA Tier 2 assessment are available under NDA through trust.town.com.

Traffic uses TLS 1.2 or 1.3, data at rest uses AES 256 GCM with extra encryption on connected account tokens, Enterprise agreements can enforce no training for every user, and no Town team member has production database access.

SourceTown, town.com/docs/admin-setup/microsoft-entra, /docs/safety/security and town.com/trustread 2026-10-05

Requests and results live in the message thread, where Poke reports back on what it did, and instructions sent through the API land in the same conversation, so the thread doubles as the record. A subscription page tracks usage against the plan's allowance and the next reset, and a status page covers service health. Users get no separate activity log, run history for automations or audit trail of actions taken in connected apps.

Sourcepoke.com/docs/usage-and-resetsread 2026-10-12

Each action is logged with what was done, when, why (the routine's reasoning), what triggered it and the result, success or failure, for auditability, debugging and accountability. Users open a routine, view the session history, and review actions taken and their reasoning. A separate security event log records blocked prompt injections, suspicious prompts, blocked tool outputs and unauthorized recipients, and custom tool results show up in the run history. There is no export to monitoring or SIEM tools, and no retention period by plan is given.

Sourcetown.com/docs/safety/security, /docs/integrations/mcp-servers; readread 2026-09-16

Poke runs only as Interaction's hosted service, reached through messaging apps and the web, and sign ups are open in every region worldwide. Buyers get no hosting location, region choice, private deployment or self hosted option.

Sourcepoke.com/docsread 2026-10-12

Town hosts the service in the US on Convex and AWS. There is no region choice, self hosting or customer environment option, and the Teams and Enterprise plans cover billing and credits, not deployment.

Sourcetown.com home; town.com/docs/billing/plans; readread 2026-09-16

Recipes are ready made setups a user installs in one tap, each bundling integrations, an automation and onboarding questions. Examples include a morning summary of assigned Linear issues, a TripIt import of travel plans, Oura sleep and readiness insights, Notion page organization and Gmail inbox management. The directory groups first party and approved community recipes by category, from calendar, email and finance to health, travel, students and developer tools, and creators publish their own from Kitchen after review.

Sourcepoke.com/recipesread 2026-10-12

Ready made routines sit in a browsable catalog, each a complete job a user enables.

The catalog filters by Inbox, Calendar, Meeting Prep, Stay Informed and Relationships, with a Browse all Routines view, and its entries include Auto-inbox (watches new email, labels, drafts replies, helps schedule), Decline Cold Outreach, Schedule Optimizer, Meeting Briefing, Contact Research Dossier, Morning Briefing, Competitive Intel Briefing, Newsletter Digest, GitHub Reports, Relationship Reconnect, Deal Spotter and New User Research.

A Stock Routines index has per-routine pages, and routine sharing and discovery let teams install and reuse shared routines. Each routine runs whole without the others, and routines are edited in plain language ("change my morning briefing to include..."). The routines cover personal productivity rather than specific industries, and no customer references are tied to them.

Sourcetown.com home; town.com/docs; readread 2026-09-16

Plans differ by model class. Pro brings frontier models for complex tasks, Ultra runs frontier models on every action, and the free plan falls back to a lighter mode once its allowance is used. Neither the models nor their makers are named, and a user cannot pick one. Cognition has said its own models and infrastructure will power Poke over time.

Sourcepoke.com/pricingread 2026-10-12

Town routes between models on its side, names no models and offers no choice. Priority model routing is a feature of the Power, Power Plus and Team Plus plans and is among what pauses on cancellation. No model or provider is named and customers cannot choose one, and the models in the Cursor integration are Cursor's. Town's no training commitment covers its providers without naming them.

Sourcetown.com/pricing; readread 2026-09-16

The Poke API is one endpoint. A POST with a bearer key from Kitchen delivers a message to the user's own assistant, which carries it out like a text, and the examples cover a browser extension that sends a selected page, a GitHub Action that reports a failed deploy and a Typeform or CRM webhook that hands over a new lead. The poke npm package logs in, adds MCP servers and tunnels local ones, and Kitchen publishes recipes. There is no API for reading conversations or managing integrations, recipes or automations.

Sourcepoke.com/docs/apiread 2026-10-12

Outside systems can reach Town in two ways, but Town has no REST API, SDK or MCP server of its own.

Through a webhook trigger, an external system starts a routine by sending an authenticated HTTP request to a routine specific URL, with a per routine bearer secret and rotation, JSON or text payloads, an idempotency header, rate limits and defined 202, 400, 404, 413, 415 and 429 responses, from Zapier or the customer's own app or backend.

Through custom integrations, users add MCP servers by URL, Town runs OAuth or dynamic client registration, and the tools are enabled per routine, so Town consumes MCP as a client. A trigger endpoint returns only an acceptance. The api.town.com host shows only the Convex backend banner, with no developer documentation.

Sourcetown.com/docs/routines/stock-routines/webhooks, /docs/integrations/mcp-servers; api.town.com; readread 2026-09-16

A recipe or automation goes to work once installed, and users have no way to run it against sample input, check its output against expectations or compare versions first. When automations fire so often that a user keeps reaching the plan's limit, the fix is to have Poke review and trim the busiest ones, which manages cost and speed, not quality.

Sourcepoke.com/docs/usage-and-resetsread 2026-10-12

A new or changed routine can be tried against real input, with its attempted actions reviewable, before it is allowed to act. Read only mode runs a routine that can read and analyze but blocks every change, and Town suggests it for testing new configurations, as it does the manual trigger for testing new routines. Each run's session history shows the actions the routine took and its reasoning, and read only runs still send their results to the user.

Reviewing a read only run before switching the routine to approval required or autonomous shows how the agent behaves before release. When a smart email trigger cannot judge its condition, the routine runs anyway. There are no fixtures or datasets, scored test cases or quality scores over time, and testing uses a mode rather than a dedicated harness.

Sourcetown.com/docs/safety/modes-approvals, /docs/routines/custom-routines/triggers; readread 2026-09-16

Poke works through integrations, web search and messaging, and it can build and publish a website, but it does not drive a browser, a desktop or a phone's apps. Errands that need a phone call, an order or a booking go to a human operator through Poke Human on the Ultra plan.

Sourcepoke.com/faqread 2026-10-12

Town has no browser, desktop or computer control. Actions run through named integrations with read-write tools, a run_code sandbox with optional internet access, and email, Slack and messaging channels. Town Desktop is a macOS app for native desktop workflows and notifications, a way to reach the assistant rather than an agent that operates the screen.

Sourcetown.com/docs, /docs/safety/security; town.com home; readread 2026-09-16