Basic workflows

This page is a good starting point if you want to compare a few small workflow shapes before committing to a larger agent design.

Think of it as a pattern sampler: simple sequences, split-and-merge flows, and lightweight structures you can reuse across very different tasks.

What to focus on

• Reusable “workflow skeletons” you can apply across tasks
• Where to insert tools, retrieval, and evaluation
• Keeping prompts short by relying on structure

When it works well

• You are still deciding between serial, parallel, or staged work
• You want a minimal pattern before adding tools or memory
• You need a reusable scaffold, not a domain-specific solution

If you want to reproduce it locally

After your local Cookbook setup is ready, you can validate the matching example with:

make test-notebooks NOTEBOOK=patterns/agents/basic_workflows.ipynb