Workflow

What is a Workflow

A workflow is a defined, multi-step process that runs in a specific sequence: do this, then this, then this, rather than the agent improvising a fresh approach on every run. It can be as small as a single agent moving through a fixed checklist, or as large as several agents, each owning one stage, handing work to the next in a defined order.

What makes something a workflow rather than a loose set of instructions is the sequence itself being the point. A release workflow, for instance, might always mean: run the test suite, then build, then check a deploy checklist, then ship, in that order, every time, regardless of which agent or which session executes it. Skills, subagents, and hooks are all things a workflow can use along the way, but none of them are the workflow itself, they're ingredients a defined sequence can call on.

A workflow can be triggered by a human typing a slash command, by a scheduled cron job, or by a self-paced loop deciding it's time to run again. What stays constant regardless of the trigger is that the steps happen in the same defined order each time, which is what makes a workflow something a team can document, rely on, and improve, rather than something that has to be re-explained from scratch on every run.