Workflow orchestration

Running multi-step AI work as an explicit workflow: graphs of steps with retries, timeouts, state, and human gates—not only a free-form chat loop.

Production reliability needs orchestration. Free-form agents are flexible; workflows are operable.

Define steps → inputs/outputs → failure policies → idempotency → observability. Use LLMs inside steps; keep control flow outside when you can.

Invoice process: extract → validate → approve → pay—each step logged, not one mega-prompt.

Turn a 5-step business process into a flowchart with one approval node.

⚠️ Myth: Orchestration kills intelligence.

✓ Reality: It channels intelligence into measurable stages.

⚠️ Myth: One agent loop replaces all workflows.

✓ Reality: Many enterprise tasks want DAGs + SLAs.

• Course 10 agents; permissions; evaluation-of-agents
• Course 17 MLOps
• OpenAI Academy workflows: https://academy.openai.com/en ↗