Designing repeatable agent-friendly workflows that turn intent into output. The shape of a good workflow, the failure modes of a bad one.
Most people, given an AI, ask it to do whole jobs. Write me a marketing plan. Run my hiring process. The AI does a mediocre version of the whole job, the person is unimpressed, and the conclusion is AI is overhyped.
The real unlock is workflow design: breaking a job into steps, identifying which steps are AI-friendly, then orchestrating them. Same AI. Better output. Because the work was decomposed first.
Every workflow has the same shape. Done well, this turns vague jobs into shippable processes. Done badly, you get a Zapier flow nobody understands.
Most people, given an AI, ask it to do whole jobs. Write me a marketing plan. Run my hiring process. The AI does a mediocre version of the whole job, the person is unimpressed, and the conclusion is AI is overhyped.
The real unlock is workflow design: breaking a job into steps, identifying which steps are AI-friendly, then orchestrating them. Same AI. Better output. Because the work was decomposed first.
AI is excellent at: research, drafting, transformation, classification, summarisation. AI is poor at: novel judgment, taste calls, emotional intelligence, negotiation. Knowing the line saves hours.
Step where AI scores and human spot-checks is different from step where AI suggests and human decides. The first is automated with sampling. The second is collaborative with handoff.
Naming the routing kills 80% of workflow friction. Most failed workflows mix the two: an AI step pretends to be autonomous when it actually needs a human in the loop, or a collaborative step pretends to be automated and produces garbage.
Pick a task you do regularly that you wish were faster. Lead intake, weekly report, content review, code review, customer email triage. Open a markdown file called workflows/[task].md.
Top of the file: "This workflow takes X and produces Y." If you cannot, split into two workflows.
Each step is one verb plus what gets touched. "Read inbound email. Extract company name. Look up size from Crunchbase. Write a one-line summary. Post to Slack."
[me], [agent: writer], [tool: zapier], [no one]. Be honest. The gaps become visible.
[auto], [draft + review], [never]. "Look up size from Crunchbase" -> auto. "Write a one-line summary" -> draft + review. "Decide if we pursue" -> never.
Pick the highest-value [auto] step. Ask Claude to build it. Test it once. Wire it into your daily flow.
One workflow decomposed and written down. At least one automated step shipped. The five-question drill is now a habit you can run on any task without prompting.
You take a task you do regularly, run it through the five questions in ten minutes, and walk out with a working workflow file plus one automated step.