Workflow or agent? How to choose
Agents are exciting, but most business automations work better as plain workflows. A simple test tells you which one you need.
James Obi · Automate & Scale · · 2 min read
A workflow follows steps you decided in advance: when a form arrives, enrich the lead, score it, post it to the CRM. An agent decides its own next step: given a goal and some tools, it chooses what to call and when to stop.
The test: can you draw it?
If you can draw the process as boxes and arrows before it runs, build a workflow. It will be cheaper, faster and much easier to debug. Reach for an agent when the path genuinely depends on what it finds along the way — triaging support requests, researching a company, cleaning messy data with many edge cases.
- Workflow: the steps are known, the volume is high, mistakes are expensive.
- Agent: the steps vary, the volume is modest, a human reviews the result.
- Both: a workflow that calls an agent for the one step that needs judgment.
Tip: Put a human before anything irreversible
Let the agent draft the email, the refund or the database change, and have a person approve it. You keep the speed and lose most of the risk.
