Comparison · App and agent builders
Curiosity and IBM watsonx
Parts to assemble, or a layer to build on
Curiosity builds tools on a context graph; watsonx gives you IBM’s parts to search documents and orchestrate agents.
Your data · your environment
Who each tool is for
Different problems, honestly stated
Curiosity
For industrial and regulated teams whose knowledge sits in engineering systems and structured records, where the answer depends on how those records connect, and where the deployment has to run on their own infrastructure.
IBM watsonx
IBM’s AI portfolio, including watsonx Discovery for search and document analytics and watsonx Orchestrate for building agents that act on business systems, available in IBM Cloud, in hybrid deployments and on premises. Large rollouts are often assembled with IBM’s services teams.
How Curiosity compares
Where the boundary falls
watsonx brings capable pieces for search and for agents. Curiosity connects your records into one typed, permission-aware graph first, so the agents and tools built on it trace their answers back to a record.
Grounded, not guessed
A tool Studio builds runs on the graph, so every figure it shows traces back to a record in a source system.
Your permissions, inherited
A generated tool cannot show a user anything the source system would not already show them, down to the individual record.
From prompt to production
The tool ships to real users with an audit trail, not as a prototype someone has to rebuild before it goes live.
Runs on your infrastructure
On premises or in your private cloud, with the language model you choose.
Side by side
Feature comparison
The same five questions, answered for both.
Deployment
Cloud or self-hosted, ready to use
IBM Cloud, hybrid or on premises
Data model
Managed context layer and knowledge graph
Document search and agent orchestration
Industrial fit
Built for industrial and enterprise teams
Broad enterprise, often with services
Data reach
70+ systems connected, and yours through a connector you write
Business apps and documents
Residency
EU hosted, or entirely your own infrastructure
Configurable
Customization
What your team can change
Your own code, interface, data model and configuration. IBM watsonx as its own documentation described it in October 2026. Where it says Not available, the vendor documents no such capability.
Your own code
C# endpoints, AI tools and tasks, compiled in Studio
Python tools in isolated containers, plus OpenAPI tools
Your own interface
Your own front end in C#, deployed from git
Orchestrate chat, brandable embedded web chat widget
Data model
Typed node and edge schemas you define
Not available
Configuration as code
Every change committed to git, pushed to your remote
YAML specs via ADK CLI, Git based CI/CD
APIs and SDKs
REST API, C# and Python library, connector SDK
REST API, Python ADK and CLI
AI integration
What AI can build and reach
Whether AI can build on it, who reviews the result, and which models it runs. IBM watsonx as its own documentation described it in October 2026.
AI that builds
Sudo drafts endpoints, tools, schemas and screens
AI Builder creates and refines agents from descriptions
Review before it applies
Every change a diff a person approves, in a sandbox
Builder writes YAML spec, draft before live
Model choice
Any major provider, or an OpenAI compatible endpoint
OpenAI, Anthropic, Bedrock, Ollama, OpenAI compatible endpoints
Models on your servers
Open weights on your servers, or air gapped
On premises on Kubernetes, local models via Ollama
Assistant permissions
Built in tools search as the user, per record
OAuth on behalf of flow with user credentials
Agent protocols
MCP server and an OpenAI compatible API
MCP toolkits, A2A client, ADK MCP server
At Airbus, we developed the next generation of customer support AI assistance tools with Curiosity, enhancing our technical support’s ability to access and navigate vast data from multiple sources, including millions of documents.
Services Innovation Team
Airline Services at Airbus
App and agent builders
Other comparisons in this group
Microsoft Copilot Studio and Power Apps
Curiosity builds tools on your whole industrial estate; Copilot Studio and Power Apps build agents and apps inside Microsoft 365.
CompareMicrosoft Foundry
Curiosity builds tools on your connected records; Microsoft Foundry is Azure’s workbench for building agents.
CompareRetool
Curiosity builds tools on a context graph; Retool builds interfaces on the databases and APIs you point it at.
CompareYour data. Your infrastructure.