Kestra vs Motive Agents

Kestra

Kestra's open-source edition has a 216-operation OpenAPI spec, Markdown docs for agents and weekly patch releases on two long-term support lines. Its only credential is one basic-auth username and password with full access, and five critical advisories were published between March and September 2026, all fixed.

Motive Agents

Agents let Motive fleet admins turn safety, maintenance and idling events into alerts, training, work orders and in-cab calls from the Fleet Dashboard, on a platform with a 99.99 per cent dashboard SLA and audited security reports. No API, webhook or MCP tool covers Agents, so an outside agent can't create, run or read them.

Kestra

1. Run 2.0.5 or 1.3.42 or later. Earlier builds carry unauthenticated remote code execution advisories fixed in 1.3.38 and 2.0.3
2. Set kestra.server.basic-auth in the config file before first start. Without it the setup page is open to anyone who reaches the port
3. Put the tenant in the path. Open-source instances use main, as in /api/v1/main/executions/{namespace}/{id}
4. Send flow inputs as multipart form fields, and add wait=true to get the finished execution in the same call
5. Keep port 8081 off any shared network. The management endpoints there skip the API's basic auth

Motive Agents

1. Don't plan to call Motive Agents. They're built and run by people in the Motive Fleet Dashboard
2. For Motive fleet data, use Motive's Public API or its MCP server instead, with the customer's admin authorisation
3. Ask the fleet's Motive admin to set up or change an Agent, and describe the trigger, condition and action you need
4. Expect Agents to place real calls to drivers and mark vehicles out of service, so confirm with the fleet manager before suggesting one