Workflow Control

Position in Module#

• Unit: 8
• Friday topic: Designing Workflows: From Single Chat to Reliable AI Systems
• Literacy perspective: System
• Collaboration level: Orchestration
• Fundamentals connection: Agentic AI Fundamentals
• Challenge type: Workflow Control

This file is the detailed source of truth for the unit challenge. It specifies an evidence-based experiment that participants can transfer to their own professional, disciplinary, or organizational context.

Purpose and Demonstrated Mastery#

This challenge develops System Literacy through agentic workflow orchestration. Participants demonstrate that they can implement or tightly specify a workflow with capabilities, state, tools, permissions, and control points.

Clarify in the submitted work:

• the collaboration move participants practice: Orchestration
• the literacy perspective through which they manipulate, observe, and interpret AI behaviour: System
• the generative or agentic AI fundamental that explains why the experiment matters: Agentic AI Fundamentals
• the caveat or limitation participants should keep visible: tool access increases capability and risk at the same time. An agent with broad permissions can act on a mistaken plan, call the wrong tool, leak context, overwrite useful work, or create cascading errors, so permission boundaries and dry-run modes should be observable parts of the workflow.

Challenge Focus Logic#

• Difficulty: Single-chat interaction provides too little reliability, traceability, and oversight for tasks where control matters.
• Approach: Implement or tightly specify a multi-step agentic workflow in n8n, Google Vertex, or an equivalent environment, define its required skills or reusable instructions, tools, resources, prompts, state transfers, and control points, compare it against a simpler baseline, and justify when orchestration improves control.
• Artefacts: protocol document; prediction table; workflow representation such as diagram, screenshot, exported flow, or structured step specification; capability map covering skills, tools, resources, prompts, and permissions; run log comparing baseline and workflow conditions; selected intermediate traces or outputs; concise interpretation; one practical orchestration rule for similar tasks.

Assignment#

Choose a task, use case, document, decision process, or workflow from your own context that fits the unit focus. Define a baseline condition and a target condition that deliberately changes the relevant variable, workflow, responsibility logic, or design choice.

Before running the main comparison, predict what should change and why. Then produce an inspectable artefact, compare outcomes, and interpret whether the target condition improved control compared with the baseline.

Experimental Design#

Define before main execution:

• task/use case and intended output
• baseline configuration or approach
• target configuration, workflow, or intervention
• manipulated variable(s) or design change(s)
• what remains constant across comparison
• expected effects per manipulation/change
• evaluation criteria or conditions of satisfaction
• caveat to watch for: tool access increases capability and risk at the same time. An agent with broad permissions can act on a mistaken plan, call the wrong tool, leak context, overwrite useful work, or create cascading errors, so permission boundaries and dry-run modes should be observable parts of the workflow.

The manipulated variable(s) and evaluation criteria should follow from the relevant literacy lens:

• Interaction: request or exchange design
• Mechanism: settings, model behaviour, variability, or representation limits
• Data: grounding, source, retrieval, chunking, or bias conditions
• System: workflow, role, tool, state, or control-point design
• Human-Context: trust, responsibility, legitimacy, decision logic, acceptance, or accountability

Required Artefacts#

Required artefacts for this challenge:

• protocol document
• prediction table linking changes to expected effects
• primary artefact or output produced by the challenge
• run log comparing baseline versus target conditions
• selected evidence excerpts, screenshots, traces, retrieval results, judge reports, stakeholder feedback, capability maps, or workflow diagrams as appropriate for the unit
• concise interpretation plus one practical rule for similar tasks

Unit-specific artefact focus:

protocol document; prediction table; workflow representation such as diagram, screenshot, exported flow, or structured step specification; capability map covering skills, tools, resources, prompts, and permissions; run log comparing baseline and workflow conditions; selected intermediate traces or outputs; concise interpretation; one practical orchestration rule for similar tasks.

Evidence and Observation#

Participants should capture evidence that makes the comparison inspectable.

Define:

• what should be observed: reliability and accountability
• what counts as evidence for the selected use case
• which qualitative or quantitative criteria should be used
• how uncertainty, failures, caveats, or unexpected results should be documented

Interpretation#

Participants should explain:

• whether the target condition improved control compared with the baseline
• what evidence supports that conclusion
• how the literacy perspective explains the observed difference
• how the relevant fundamental or caveat appeared in practice
• what practical rule they would carry into future work

Assessment Orientation#

Assess based on:

• meaningfulness of the baseline versus target comparison
• quality and coherence of protocol design
• credibility of variable/control isolation
• suitability of artefacts and evidence
• evidence-grounded interpretation and conceptual understanding
• explicit connection to the relevant literacy, collaboration level, and fundamental
• actionable final insight

Teacher-Configurable Options#

• exact submission format
• work mode: individual or group
• minimum scope: runs, materials, artefact depth, or workflow implementation
• environment constraints: shared tool or alternatives
• whether a workflow must be implemented or may be tightly specified
• optional extensions