In short
A piece of work from trigger to done, run by an agent under instructions. Not a flowchart. The agent handles the branches the chart never drew.
A workflow is a job with a beginning and an end: a draft arrives and a post is live; a lead appears and a brief is written; a meeting ends and the change is shipped. An agent runs it under its instructions.
The old way to automate a workflow was a node editor: boxes and arrows, if this then that. It works until reality does something the diagram did not anticipate, which is the second week. Agent workflows are different. The instructions say what the outcome must be and what the rules are, and the agent works out the path, including the cases nobody drew.
This is why we say if-this-then-that is stale. The programming is the instruction, not the diagram.
Example
What it looks like.
A draft comes in as a Word file with two images missing and a statute cited twice. A flowchart breaks. An agent under instructions structures the text, generates the images, keeps both citations because the rule says the author's substance is untouchable, and publishes.Related
Read next.
- agentSoftware that reads its instructions, looks at the situation, takes actions with real tools, and reports back. Runs on a schedule or on a trigger, without being prompted.Read the definition
- orchestrationDeciding what runs, in what order, with what rules, and who gets told. The constraint now that intelligence is cheap.Read the definition
- skillA reusable set of instructions for one job, written in Markdown, that an agent loads when the job comes up.Read the definition
- cronA schedule. The thing that runs an agent at 10:15 every morning whether anyone remembers or not.Read the definition