Introduction to Agentic Workflows and AI Agents
This is the first blog on this site that’s not written by an agent (ironically). Every other blog post on this site was at least fully drafted by an AI agent including their images.
But what is an AI Agent? And what are Agentic Workflows? And how can you use them for your business? and how does it connect with WordPress?
Let me first give you the explanation that one of my AI agents using Perplexity generated for the question of “What is an Agentic Workflow?”
Agentic Workflow is an innovative approach to automation that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) agents to execute complex tasks dynamically. This methodology is particularly beneficial for environments where traditional rule-based automation falls short due to non-linear workflows and the need for real-time decision-making.
I think this short paragraph summarizes the core difference between automation, zero-shot AI tools and agentic workflows perfectly.
The three levels of automation:
- Traditional rule-based and step by step automations: They follow the “If this, then that” mentality. They are usually linear and cannot support real-time decision making. In the WordPress eco-system these are likes of Gravityflow, Uncanny automator and SureTriggers. And outside of WordPress you have known players such as Zapier.
- Zero-shot AI tools: Not really a type of automation, but you can use a specific AI tool to generate a blog article, or write a simple program in one shot. They function automatically but need several shots by a user to get the perfect results. ChatGPT is a great example of these tools. In the WordPress ecosystem there are tools such as AI Engine plugin or Ai Power that give you some sort of AI capability to either chat, or to generate content.
- Agentic Workflow Automations: It’s a new class of system that is built to act with autonomy. In these system a goal and several steps exist, but AI agents each trained or tasked to do a part of the work collaborate together to achieve the results. They make decisions in real-time, and usually perform several streams of work at once to get something done. You can create such systems with tools such as n8n. In the WordPress ecosystem nothing like this existed, so I decided to build AI Workflow Automation, which basically enables WordPress to host and run AI Agents and Agentic Workflows within the platform.
How Are Agentic Workflows Different to Traditional Automation?
Good question! Let me explain to you using a simple example:
Automating Essay Writing
First case: Traditional Automation
There is really no way to automate a creative task with traditional step-by-step automation. You might be able to automate publication of it, but not much more.
Your best option would be to make an API call to an LLM model to get help and generate some content. The flow would looks like this:
Insert Idea --> API call to OpenAI --> Publish ArticleSecond case: Zero-shot AI Tools
It’s basically the previous example without the API call. You go to ChatGPT or some other chat environment in whichever environment you like, this could also be even inside your WordPress dashboard. Then you type in: Write a 200-word essay for me about XYZ. And the AI model generates it for you.
You review it, if it’s not good, you do it again, and repeat until you like the results.
Third case: Agentic Workflow
There is an entry point, where you enter your idea, or where you trigger the workflow and the agents to wake up. For example, we insert our idea in a text box, and click run. The workflow would look like this:
Write an Essay on topic XYZ -->(Agent 1: researcher)Research the topic on the web and return results and citations, pass to agent 2 --> (Agent 2: reviewer) Create an Essay outline based on the search results, pass to agent 3 --> (Agent 3: writer) Draft the full article based on the research and the outline, pass to Agent 2 for review --> (Agent 2: reviewer) Review the document and add notes on improvements ...
The process is iterative, non-linear, and extensible beyond the means of current automations. And this was just a simple essay. Imagine what you can achieve with these agents for finance, HR, marketing, sales, etc.
Key Features of Agentic Workflow
- Iterative and Multi-Step Process: Agentic workflow breaks down complex tasks into smaller, manageable steps, allowing for continuous improvement and adaptation throughout the task-completion process.
- AI Agents: AI agents are used to carry out specific roles and tasks, equipped with personalities and attributes that enable them to collaborate and execute tasks with high accuracy.
- Advanced Prompt Engineering: Techniques such as chain of thought, planning, and self-reflection enable AI agents to autonomously plan and execute tasks.
- Dynamic Adaptation: Agentic workflows adapt to real-time changes and handle a wide variety of user requests, making them ideal for dynamic environments.
Why WordPress? What’s with that? seems kind of random…
Well, have you ever dreamt about an AI-powered system that can help you go through ideation, desk research, customer validation, prototyping and launching with one click?
Well, I had that dream. And I am not a programmer, and I didn’t have the means to hire a team to build this, so I decided to use AI to build this system myself, for it to work on the most flexible platform I knew: WordPress. So much is already built in, from databases, to user management, to APIs etc. And the rest is open-source for you to modify and build what you want. It’s just the perfect environment to build and scale solutions on (to some extent).
Yes, you can always stich services together, use some website builder, then connect APIs on the backend, then use something like Make.com or Zapier or n8n, then you still need to make sure you are doing everything safely and correctly. And it’s not your own hosting, you are always sending your and your customer’s data somewhere else, and hope for the best.
It’s just not as fast and as ready to implement.
With WordPress and AI Workflow Automation, you can start a service that has an Agentic Workflow supporting it on the backend in literally minutes.
Why should I use AI Agents?
Ask yourself these questions:
- Do I want to automate a process such as order management?
- Does my process work without real-time decision making?
- Does this process consist of moving data between some plugins, extensions and services to achieve a goals such as user registration or sending welcome emails?
If you answered Yes! to all the questions above, then you don’t need AI agents or agentic workflows. You need an automation tool that has integrations with the plugins or tools you want to automate.
But if the answer to those questions are No, then you probably need something more. If you feel your process needs decision making, live analysis, any sort of generation (content, code, analysis, etc.) to be complete, then you are looking for an agentic workflow system.
If you are using WordPress or if you want to build on WordPress, then I suggest you use our 14-day free trial to play around and build agentic automations.
Where do I start with Agentic Workflows?
Start here with us, if you know how to use WordPress. With AI Workflow Automation, you can choose any LLM from all major providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta Llama, Perplexity, Mistral, And even Xai‘s newly released Grok models.
You can train these models to be your agents, do different tasks for you in one workflow or several different workflows, and then bring in all the results to another agent. You can make it as simple or as complex as you want. And the best part? The system has a built-in agent that helps you build workflows simply by explaining what you want to achieve, so you don’t even need to spend time ideating, just get to building!
If you want to do so, sign up in our newsletter, get a 10% discount, and kick off your agentic journey now!
