AI Vocabulary · 05 Agents
What is Agentic Workflow?
A process in which AI decides for itself which steps lead to a goal.
A classic workflow automation follows a fixed path: if this, then that. An agentic workflow gives an agent a goal and some tools, and lets it decide the order of steps itself: search, read, compare, draft, check, try again.
In practice most good systems mix both. Predictable parts run as fixed steps, and only the parts that need judgement are handed to the agent. That keeps costs, risks and surprises in check.
Why it matters for you
Agentic workflows can take on messy, multi-step work such as research, lead qualification or preparing reports. They are also harder to predict and test, so they need clear limits and checkpoints.
Own it
Decide where the agent may choose freely and where the path is fixed. Put a human in the loop at the points that matter, and log what the agent did, so you can always understand and correct a decision.
Where it comes from
Andrew Ng popularised the phrase in March 2024 in his newsletter The Batch. His striking example: on a coding benchmark, an older model working in an iterative agent loop scored up to 95.1 percent, far above a stronger model answering in one go at 67 percent (The Batch). The message stuck: the workflow can matter as much as the model.
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