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Free Lesson
Workflow or Agent? Pick right and save AI development costs
90 min
Dec 10, 2026 12:00 PM
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What you'll learn
Map the ways you can hand a task to AI
From a chat assistant to a system built by developers: who starts each one, who checks the result, what access it needs.
Pick the right option for a task
Ask how often the task happens, who checks the result, what a mistake would cost and who looks after it later.
Tell a workflow from an agent
Why a workflow is usually cheaper and more reliable when you can write the steps down, and which tasks need an agent.
Walk one real task through every option
Our example is sorting customer feedback and flagging what needs action. You also get a one-page guide.
Why this topic matters
The word “agent” now covers very different products, from a fixed workflow with one AI step to a system that plans its own work. It's common to see work done by hand in a chat window that could run on its own, or an agent built for a task with five fixed steps. Knowing the options helps you pick the simplest one that does the job, spend less on tokens and people's time, and explain what you need when you bring in a developer.
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