Agentic workflow

An ordinary automation follows a fixed script: if this, then that. An agentic workflow is looser. You give it the goal and the available tools, and the agent decides the route itself, with room to adjust course if an intermediate step fails.

That suits work that is not identical every time. Think of a case file that is complete one time and missing a document the next, or a request that sometimes needs an extra check. A fixed script breaks on those variations, an agentic workflow handles them.

The flip side: more freedom means more chance of a wrong turn. That is why a good agentic workflow comes with hard boundaries, checks on intermediate results (see evals) and a human on the high-risk decisions. Freedom without guardrails is not a feature but a risk.