Originally published at What Is an Agentic Workflow? Loop, Pipeline and Orchestration on smartgate.network.
A shorter version of "What Is an Agentic Workflow? Loop, Pipeline and Orchestration" — the full piece lives at smartgate.network.
What the full piece covers
- What an agentic workflow is, and what it is not — An agentic workflow is a control loop with tools.
- ai workflow automation: automating steps versus automating judgement — The phrase people search for and the thing they mean are one step apart, and the gap is where most failed projects sit.
- agent orchestration: who decides the next step — Orchestration is the answer to a single question: at each turn, what decides what happens next?
- agent pipeline: stages, state and what each step returns — Once the order is fixed, a pipeline is five decisions: what the steps are, what each one receives, what each one returns, what happens when one fails, and what is recorded.
- pipeline orchestration: retries, offsets and idempotency — Pipeline orchestration is the unglamorous half: what happens on the second attempt.
- agent supervisor: the pattern, its bill, and when it pays — The supervisor pattern puts one agent in charge of several.
- agent handoff: passing a task without losing the thread — A handoff is the moment one agent stops and another continues.
- multi agent orchestration: three topologies and their failure modes — Multi-agent orchestration is a topology choice, and there are three that actually get used.
- multi agent ai: when one agent is the better answer — A single agent with four well-named tools beats a multi-agent system with the same four tools in almost every case that fits in one context window.
- llmops: how you operate a workflow after it ships — Operating a workflow is a different job from building it, and it is where the budget actually goes.
- The three named templates, and what a step is — A pipeline needs a starting shape, and the most common starting shapes are the same three tasks in every codebase.
- What a workflow costs on each plan — Per-key rate limits are what a single loop meets; the plan is what its team meets.
- …plus 2 more section(s).
Read the full piece: What Is an Agentic Workflow? Loop, Pipeline and Orchestration on smartgate.network.
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