Agentic Workflows

Audience: Administrators, Developers, Solution Architects

Purpose: Introduces Agentic Workflows as the execution layer of the Kizen platform, establishes a mental model for how they work, and prepares readers to progress into Core Concepts, Triggers, Execution, and API guidance.

Overview

Agentic Workflows are the mechanism through which Kizen responds to events, processes logic, and takes action, such as connecting data changes, time-based conditions, and external signals to meaningful outcomes without requiring manual intervention each time. They operate asynchronously in the background, executing a configured sequence of steps against a specific Record or globally across the platform.

Agentic Workflows are designed to handle ongoing, event-driven Workflows, not to backfill historical data, replace reporting, or substitute for manual data entry and UI configuration. Understanding this distinction upfront helps you design Agentic Workflows with accurate expectations about when and how they run.

When to Use Agentic Workflows

Agentic Workflows are the right tool when you need Kizen to respond to something and take action automatically. Common use cases include:

• Sending a follow-up communication when a Record reaches a specific stage or a form is submitted

• Assigning ownership, updating fields, or creating related Records based on data changes or incoming webhook signals

• Running a scheduled sequence of actions against a set of Records on a recurring basis

• Coordinating multi-step Workflows across Objects, such as notifying a team, updating a status, and scheduling an Activity, without manual intervention at each step

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Agentic Workflows Mastery Checklist

Explore the following topics to understand how Agentic Workflows are configured and used in Kizen.

Core Knowledge

• What an Agentic Workflow is and how it differs from manual processes and reporting

• How Agentic Workflows fit into Kizen's overall platform as the execution layer

• The Event → Steps → Execution → Completion mental model and how to apply it to a real workflow

Agentic Workflow Types & Initiation

• The difference between Record-scoped and global Agentic Workflows and when to use each

• How to start an Agentic Workflow manually, from a record, in bulk, or from another Agentic Workflows

Triggers

• How triggers define when and why an Agentic Workflow starts

• The difference between action-based, scheduled, and webhook triggers

• How trigger timing, throttling, and async evaluation affect when an Agentic Workflow runs

Conditions, Goals & Variables

• How condition steps evaluate logic and route execution down a yes or no path

• How goals differ from conditions and delays, and when to use them — see Agentic Workflow Goals (Topic Coming Soon)

• How variables are defined, evaluated, and used across steps — see Agentic Workflow Variables (Topic Coming Soon)

Actions

• The full range of available action step types and how each behaves

• How action types vary by Agentic Workflow context and Object type

Execution & Processing

• What it means for Agentic Workflows to execute asynchronously and what that implies for data consistency

• How execution state, step history, and traceability work

• How delays interact with execution state and time-based behavior

• How execution statuses, step statuses, and system indicators are represented and interpreted

Data Model

• How Agentic Workflows, executions, and step history are structured and persisted — see Agentic Workflow Data Model (Topic Coming Soon)

• How the data model maps to APIs and webhooks — see Agentic Workflow Data Model (Topic Coming Soon)

Code Steps

• How code steps execute within an Agentic Workflow and interact with variables and execution context

• Available Python runtimes, execution limits, and pre-installed libraries — see Code Step Runtimes, Limits, and Libraries (Topic Coming Soon)

• How Kizen field values are encoded when passed into and out of code steps — see Kizen Data Types and Data Encoding (Topic Coming Soon)

• Best practices for writing reliable, maintainable, and debuggable code steps — see Code Step Best Practices (Topic Coming Soon)

AI Agent Steps

• How Call LLM, File Extraction, and Audio Transcription steps work and when to use each

• How to configure confidence thresholds, handle errors, and validate outputs from AI-driven steps — see LLM/AI Action Steps (Topic Coming Soon)

• When to use a code step instead of an LLM step for deterministic logic — see Code Step Best Practices (Topic Coming Soon)

Safeguards & Runtime Controls

• How throttling works and what it means for execution timing — see Agentic Workflow Safeguards & Runtime Controls (Topic Coming Soon)

• How infinite loop prevention works for Go To Step loops and cross-Agentic Workflow interactions — see Agentic Workflow Safeguards & Runtime Controls (Topic Coming Soon)

• How the execution kill switch protects against runaway Agentic Workflows — see Agentic Workflow Safeguards & Runtime Controls (Topic Coming Soon)

Permissions

• How permissions interact with Agentic Workflows at design time and runtime — see Agentic Workflow Permissions (Topic Coming Soon)

• Why runtime execution bypasses standard record permissions and what that means in practice — see Agentic Workflow Permissions (Topic Coming Soon)

APIs & Webhooks

• How to trigger and control Agentic Workflows programmatically via the API — see Agentic Workflow APIs Overview (Coming Soon)

• How to start, pause, resume, and cancel executions via API — see Start Agentic Workflow on Record, Resume Paused Execution, Pause Execution, and Cancel Execution (Topic Coming Soon)

• How webhook triggers work and how to configure POST and GET webhook-based Agentic Workflows — see Webhook Trigger (POST) and Webhook Trigger (GET) (Topic Coming Soon)

Design Best Practices

• How to design Agentic Workflows that are linear, observable, and maintainable — see Agentic Workflow Design Best Practices (Topic Coming Soon)

• When to combine steps, reduce branching, and avoid cross-Agentic Workflow entanglement — see Agentic Workflow Design Best Practices (Topic Coming Soon)

• How to plan Agentic Workflows for scale and observability — see Agentic Workflow Design Best Practices (Topic Coming Soon)

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What's Next

Continue to Agentic Workflow Core Concepts to build the foundational understanding you need before configuring Agentic Workflows, designing execution strategies, or working with the API.

Related Topics

• Agentic Workflow Core Concepts

• Agentic Workflow Code Steps